What Makes Good Company Values
Or are they destined to be hot air?
Integrity! Accountability! Diligence! Perseverance!
Do your company's corporate values sound like this? If they do, you may want to add "Bland" and "Useless" to the list.
I know that’s tough love, but I have a sneaking suspicion you know what I’m getting at. :)
My disgruntlement on the topic started early.
At my first job out of college, I was excited to get invited to the Mission & Values offsite. I was young, idealistic, and without a frame of reference. The 4 or 5 we came up with? Sounded lovely to me.
Cut to when we returned home. The CEO went right to one of my colleagues, a super-bright Chinese fellow with a Ph.D. in computer science. The CEO asked him to write out the values in Mandarin so they could be carved out of wood to hang over the door to the office. This sounded like a cool idea for about a minute before I remembered I couldn’t read Mandarin. Hui wasn’t the only employee who could, but I think he was one of 2.
Being the bold upstart, I pointed out that the team would be more likely to remember the values if we could all read what they said. As you can imagine, that didn’t go over well with the CEO…
Thus began my long frustration with toothless, ineffectual company values.
So, now for something completely different. Let’s reframe how we think about values, score them, and structure them to push our businesses forward.
Why even have values? To help us make decisions.
What decisions need values? The hard ones.
How do values help? They tell us which way to err.
Scoring Our Values: A Rubric for Value Effectiveness.
Why even have values?
Let’s start with the most critical question in any product person’s repertoire.
What problem are we trying to solve?
Company values are often based on the idea that stating the values is an important problem to solve. Hogwash. That’s not the actual problem. Nobody’s on a call wondering what the values are in the abstract.
So are values meaningless? Not at all. The real problem to be solved here is how should the org navigate tough decisions. Making decisions is the common thread between teams and employees. From big scary ones like “Do I give this person another chance or fire them?” to everyday interactions like “Should I double-check my work or ship it? Help the new intern or focus on heads-down tasks?” Our days are filled with murky decisions and our attempts to use good judgment.
We talk about these 51% / 49% decisions that make it to the CEO / President and get a “the buck stops here” kind of decision, but in reality everyone in the org is making these decisions regularly. We can’t ask the CEO for a judgment call on each of them, we need a scaleable solution.
Company values should be this scaleable solution that lets us impact decision-making across an org. That’s why it sucks when they’re not designed to empower teams.
Values help tell us which principles to lean toward.
For corporate values to be practical, they need to focus on specifying the company's position on fundamental virtues, albeit in as practical and applicable a way as possible.
At Prefab, ours functions as a little cheat sheet. A memorable framing of where the company falls on these spectrums so we can have immediate guidance when in the thick of it. This balancing act, this idea that both values are good, is the key to how we should proceed.
What do good values look like?
Let’s get down and dirty. How should companies formulate values? Is it possible to measure their impact? Sure it is.
Principles are where we fall on weighing one core “good” against another. Our formulation gives us an easy way to evaluate and score them.
If the value implies “thing A is good”, we give it zero points.
Example: “Perseverance” - O Points
These are just truisms. We might as well have a company value of “Puppies are Cute”.
The formulation we want is: we value A more than B. If the value is “thing A > thing B”, the score has very little to do with A and everything to do with how desirable B is. In increasing order of B desirability:
"Perseverance > Giving Up" - 1 Point
"Perseverance > Cutting Losses" - 3 Points
"Perseverance > Rational Decisions" - 5 Points
To be clear: The "score" here does not indicate whether this value is a good idea! The 5 pointer above sounds like a nightmare for most organizations. The score describes how clear and impactful it will be.
Why structure it this way? Perseverance by itself is useless lip service. Of course, we want to keep going even when there are bumps along the way. But it gives the employee zero guidance.
The 1 point version at least urges the employee to stay the course, but it doesn’t really suggest what to do if the rubber meets the road. However, by the time we get to the 3 point level, we’ve got a value with some teeth. If the employee is working on a project seeing significant headwinds, this tells them to keep pushing toward long-term vision with conviction. It’s specific. By the time we get to 5 points, this becomes an ultimatum. It’s like the cultural value we expect from Arctic explorers. Commit fully, and never look back. Achieve your goal or die trying!!
Let’s take apart the original Meta maxim: Move fast and break things. The original value here isn't formulated in our "greater than" syntax, but its strong implications made it effective.
"Move Fast" - 0 Points
"Move Fast > Careful" - 1 Point
"Move Fast and Break Things" - 4 Points
"Move Fast > Quality & Repercussions" - 5 Points
"No Assholes" is another solid example, despite the format. This is because it’s implying “No Assholes > Any excuse for assholes.” Another positive spin could be:
Means > Ends
Safe & Caring Personal Interactions > Talent
Again, the score here indicates how impactful the value is, not that it’s the right value. This is why formulating your values can and should be challenging. If the impact is scored on the desirability of the thing that you are giving up, these are going to be real sacrifices with consequences. Will you give up revenue in order to do right by employees? Is sustainability more important than growth? Values should make it clear where you stand.
‘If you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for?’ - Hamilton
I’m ready and eager for the #hottakes to roll in. Drop them below.
My Takeaways
Corporate values work best when they serve the job to be done. We want values that can influence decision-making at the micro- and macro-level across the org.
Tackle your company values like a product. Ask yourself how decisions get made at your company. Define the role of values in your decision-making to guide your determinations.
There’s no “right” answer regarding principles and values, which is why “off-the-shelf” thinking will hold you back. Instead of looking at them as a binary, consider which side of the balance you want your organization to lean toward and why.
Like a great loaf of sourdough, even the best company values get stale. Scoring them can help you evaluate their impact on the org.