6 words that are not your values

Values codify your culture — they have to be meaningful

I walk by one of London’s newest office buildings, with large windows providing busy employees a glimmer of spring sunshine to their shared working space. Pillars break the room into sections, divisions of the business staking claim to their territory.

I can see different people working on different tasks — as in any business, it is their values that hold them together. A common code to show up to, no matter what part of the business they work in. Internal comms and HR teams often feel compelled to put their company’s values on the wall, as if to remind people of where they work. Through the large window it catches my eye — printed in the corporate font on a glass panel, displayed on one of the pillars:

“Have integrity”

I can see the words on the wall are being ignored. I wonder if anyone working here knows what these words mean …

At Within we help our clients find a set of meaningful values that demonstrate how they deliver on their purpose. This involves discussions around what they care about as a team, what their strengths are, what their community of stakeholders want, and how those shared attributes can be expressed as behaviours that the business lives by.

Values must be active. We need to be able to hold ourselves and each other accountable to them. And they should demonstrate, as a set of phrases, our sense of identity.

Since values set out how you uniquely do what you do, they need to be simple while being meaningful. Everyone in the business must align to them, and have a chance to build depth into how you all show up to them every day, across everything you do. They are an essential way to codify our cultural DNA.

So how do businesses get values so wrong?

Many brands have single words — often nouns or adjectives — that they try to use to express their values. This level of simplicity doesn’t lead to clarity — its hard to be explicit about the meaning of your values with just one word. A culture is not like Dorothy trying to find the Tin Man “heart” and the Cowardly Lion “courage” — we must be clear about what we mean with our values to set expectations on how we should behave when working together.

And although every business believes itself to be different from others, the same words tend to show up time and time again. Take for example Enron, who infamously espoused “integrity” as a reminder to work “openly, honestly and sincerely”. We know how that story turns out.

“Integrity” is one of six words which we at Within stipulate should never be values on their own. We consider these to be givens that must be found in any business operating in the world today:

“Trust”

Trust isn’t a value — it’s an outcome that results when your customers see you living your values and keeping promises. Every business, like every relationship, must be built on trust. This word surfaces with most clients we work with as something that they believe is essential; they want to trust others and be trusted.

We trust people we see and know to be real, who act from a place of clear intention and purpose. Only by having your business show up to what you stand for will trust be built.

“Integrity”

Like trust, you only have integrity when you do what you say you will do. Customers will judge you through your actions, and integrity is a result of living your values and being true to your purpose. Asking your team to “have integrity” is the equivalent of asking them to “come to work every day”.

People will “have integrity” when they show up to values that mean something to them.

“Care”

People often believe that what sets their culture apart is that they “care” about what they do more than their competitors. But simply “caring” is not a value — it should be expected that we care a lot about what we do, otherwise why are we doing it? If your culture has a way of caring about your clients/customers, this can easily be turned into a value by making the expected behaviour more explicit. How do you treat people to show you care?

For Amy’s Kitchen, the way they care for their team, the people that love their food, and the planet is crucial. Their value “Take care of each other” demonstrates how they behave as a family business and the compassion they have for others. It also supports why they are a vegetarian business who believes in looking after their entire supply chain.

“Passion”

It’s almost impossible to ask someone to be passionate about something. Leaders want their teams to be engaged with their work, but they cannot expect this by demanding people behave more “passionately”. Passion lives in purpose — when an entire culture is inspired to follow the same North Star, passion will flow.

“Honesty”

A business that isn’t honest is lying to itself and the people it serves. That business has no license to operate. Financial services companies often list “honesty” as a value, perhaps in response to the fallout of the financial crisis.

How do these companies actually show up to being honest with their customers and with each other? What might Wells Fargo have done to be more honest with customers about the products that were fraudulently being sold to them — to show how they lived up to their values:

We’re committed to the highest standards of integrity, transparency, and principled performance. We do the right thing, in the right way, and hold ourselves accountable. — Wells Fargo vision & values

“Innovation”

Leaders always want to drive their business forward, and often want to make sure an entrepreneurial spirit is embedded in their culture. Most of our clients insist that innovation is in their DNA — in fact, innovation is essential to all businesses, and your values should speak to how you innovate. For those that want to remain entrepreneurial, values should reflect how you commit to risk taking and encourage a creative, forward-thinking culture where it is ok to fail — the key attributes of an entrepreneur.

MOO expresses their drive for innovation in their value “Imagine it better”. This is all about questioning the status quo, empowering others and inviting the team to find new ways.

Remember:

The language we use to codify our culture is important. It helps to bring clarity to what is expected and creates common meaning. Living our values, however, is even more important. Values are not just words displayed on the wall. They are essential to how our culture operates, how we show up every day, and how we deliver on our purpose.