Art of Managing—Strengthen Performance by Clarifying Your Firm’s Values

The Art of Managing series is dedicated to exploring the critical issues we face in guiding our firms and teams to success in today’s volatile world.

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Clear, actionable corporate values…the type that are embedded in a firm’s DNA and used to reinforce ideal behaviors and support employee selection and development are incredibly powerful tools for managers to leverage in supporting the development of a great performance culture.

However, much like the infomercial that promises a nearly endless set of benefits with the frequently uttered, “But wait, there’s more,” there is indeed more that flows to you from the hard work of whittling your corporate values down to their meaningful, actionable essence.

The short-form of this post…if your values aren’t working hard for you and your firm every single day, it’s time for a refresh or reset.

Examples that Set Direction and Promote Performance:

Consider the primary value of The Mayo Clinic: “The needs of the patient come first.” Not only does this simple, powerful statement give birth to the hiring profile and support every single clinical and business decision, it points the way to the institution’s strategy…effectively how it will compete (as a relative term) in the market.

The Zappos Family Core Values define the hiring profile and expectations starting with the name “Family Core Values” and extending through ten short, crisp statements. The first value, “Deliver Wow Through Service,” goes a long way to defining how Zappos competes (strategy) and how it executes. As the firm’s founder has offered (I paraphrase), the original idea of selling shoes online seemed like another bad internet idea. However, the marriage of the first value with the business model supported the emergence of a firm that took a big chunk of the revenue and profit streams in the sleepy, unexciting old marketplace of shoe retailing.

Lesser known but successful regional chain, Mike’s Carwash, offers a set of Customer Service Values (separate from the Team Values) that leave no doubt about how the firm will compete and ensure that Mike’s is the destination for all of your future washes. The combined sets of values (Customer and Team) frame every decision and action from hiring to training to developing employees to managing the teams and the entire customer experience. Rocket fuel for effective performance!

The guiding principle behind the firm, S.C. Johnson (tagline: A family company) was stated by Herbert F. Johnson Sr. as, “The goodwill of people is the only enduring thing in any business. It is the sole substances. The rest is shadow.” The opening line in the “What We Do” section offers, “We make homes better for families.” Again, the simplicity and clarity of the thinking points in a direction and frames and filters every other decision at every level of the organization.

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Successful companies in my experience operate with a set of clearly understood, actionable values. These values transcend behavior and point to purpose, direction and approach. Most of the time, they are codified or articulated, however, in the case of some smaller or start-up organizations, they are present in the environment even if they are missing from the framed artwork on the wall.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

For those of us working in firms where the values are defined but not necessarily part of the daily routine, there’s nothing stopping you and your colleagues from translating them into something more meaningful and actionable for your teams. Use the existing values as starting points and work on clarifying them until they point to direction and frame decisions. And for those of you who either sit at the top or are comfortable catalyzing a positive revolution, start a movement to redefine your firm’s values. I checked, and there’s no law against discarding unproductive, cliché-riddled words with something that sets direction and defines the criteria for making decisions. It might just be a game-changer for your firm.

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