Your Company Has Core Values. Why Doesn't Anybody Use Them?

Do you know your company’s core values?

If I asked you right now what they are, could you list them all? Go ahead. I dare you. List them. Just pretend I can hear you. And you know what? I’ll pretend I didn’t plant a bug in your phone.

If you can’t remember them, I bet you can probably picture them. Because they’re probably printed somewhere in some bold font with a clean, pretty design. They probably include some version of integrity, problem solving, collaboration — maybe even accountability if someone on your leadership team was frustrated when they created them.

So here’s my question to you.

When was the last time you made a decision by actually referencing one of those core values?

Take a second if you need to think about it.

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The Decoration Problem

I’m often brought in to moderate leadership offsites or company retreats. Naturally, I look at their core values in advance. I then ask people at the company to name the core values to me.

More times than not, no individual can name all the core values. Meanwhile, leadership is no doubt proud of them. They refer to them when they talk to me.

This actually happened with a client recently. I asked the head of HR when she’d last used one of the core values to guide an actual decision. She thought about it for a while and said, “During hiring, I guess.”

They hired 4 people in the past year. 4 times per year, somebody thinks about their core values. Then the values go back to the wall and the employee manual.

That’s not a core values problem. That’s a decoration problem.

Because there’s a difference between a company that has values and a company that uses them.

It’s this…