Are your organizational values helping or hurting?

Your company values might be completely useless.

There. I've said it.

I've worked with plenty of organizations that have invested considerable time and energy creating their values.

They've found the right words.

Designed the posters.

Put them on the website.

Perhaps even printed them on a coffee mug.

And then…

hardly ever use them.

That's not just a missed opportunity.

I think values can actually start working against you when you publicly say:

“This is who we are.”

…but repeatedly tolerate behaviour that says otherwise.

People notice.

In my last post, I talked about the EOS idea of Right Person, Right Role.

So how do we know if someone is the Right Person?

For me, one of the best places to start is your values.

Not:

“Can they remember our values?”

But:

“Do they actually live them?”

Because when values are genuinely used, they make so many aspects of leadership easier.

Recruitment:
We're not simply asking, “Can this person do the job?” We're also asking, “Will they thrive here?”

Decision-making:
Good values give people a framework to make decisions themselves instead of constantly asking the boss.

Feedback:
Instead of saying, “I didn't like the way you handled that,” I can connect the conversation to something we've already agreed matters to us.

Recognition:
Values give us opportunities to notice and celebrate people actually living out the culture we're trying to create.

And then there's the difficult one:

Right Person.

Imagine you have someone who consistently delivers fantastic results…

…but regularly behaves in ways that contradict your organization's values.

Are they really one of your right people?

That's not always an easy question.

But if we're serious about our values, it's one we have to be willing to ask.

So here's my challenge.

Take your organization's values and ask yourself:

When did we last actually USE each of these?

To make a decision?

Recruit someone?

Give feedback?

Recognize somebody?

Address inappropriate behaviour?

If you can't remember…

perhaps you don't have values yet.

You have words.

Values only become powerful when they influence what people actually do.

And when they do, they help create an organization where people understand who we are, how we behave and how we make decisions together.