What are core values for a company? An action-focused definition
In this article, we provide a definition of company core values that you can use to translate the ideas and values that drive your behavior as a high-performing CEO or leader, and scale them to your team, and then teams of teams.
That means you will be able to translate these behaviors into actionable core values for your company - specifically all of the people on your team, and in your organization.
These techniques work, whether it’s you and one other person on a team, or whether you’ve got 100s or 100s of people.
What you’ll learn
By the end of this installment, you’ll have a checklist for creating core values and you’ll understand what is meant by company core values. This one’s going to be a very action-focused and people-focused definition, so it may be a little different than some of the definitions you’re used to seeing.
What typically gets in the way of using company core values
The big, aspirational “website versions” of company core values often make sense in an abstract way.
Examples include “perseverance”, “integrity”, and “trust”. These are very broad aspirations that everyone can understand. And they serve large brands by helping associate those values with their brand.
However these ideas don’t typically make it easy for employees to navigate day to day challenges and ambiguities.
And, as author Patrick Lencioni points out, these types of core values are minimum requirements to be hired, they don’t guide anything more than getting hired and not getting fired. They are not informative and are difficult to use to guide more nuanced decisions and challenges that face a business.
Our focus in this article is providing a useful, practical way of thinking about company core values.
This approach makes it easy for people to understand the behaviors you value, and to use that understanding to guide everyday decisions and actions.
Good Company Core Values Must Be User Friendly
The first key idea to get across is that your company core values need to be easy for any competent person to use.
There are a lot of company core values that lead to beautiful pictures and wall posters. And they can look great on a website.
If these also meet the criteria being laid out here, then they’re good.
However, these visual reminders are not easy to use if they don’t give examples of specific behaviors that people can follow, or specific decisions that have been made using them.
Our first criteria for a good company core value is to ensure it is easy to use in an effective way.
The rest of the sections will provide specifics on how to ensure a company core value is truly easy to use effectively.
Good Company Core Values Guide Behavior
Our second criteria for building a good company core value is that it must be a clear guide for behavior and decision making.
There are a lot of opinions on what “culture” means in the context of a company.
To keep things simple, we look to the simple, no-nonsense definition of “culture” provided by anthropologists:
Culture is the name we give the specific set behaviors you want to encourage or discourage inside your organization or team.
Any more complex definition becomes difficult to use and it violates our first requirement of being easy to use.
With this easy to use definition of culture in mind, it is easy to understand that company core values are tools to make the most important behaviors clear and visible for everyone.
When a company core value is clear, it is easy to remember and to understand.
When a company core value is easy to remember and understand, it becomes easy to use it to guide behaviors, even in challenging situations where the course of action is not clear.
In this way, company core values serve people in the company like guides on a journey. They help us make decisions when we’re not clear on how to do things, when there’s some gray area and it’s not perfectly described in a process, or it’s not clear because it’s outside your job description.
The list of company core values shows what it means to “do the right thing,” in specific terms.
Good Company Core Values Help Everyone Prioritize
Your company core values serve as tools that help you prioritize.
They can help prioritize which behaviors are most important, and help make decisions about how you sequence specific actions in your day.
Imagine you are part of a company that makes widgets. And that you’ve begun your day with a specific plan. Your time may be mapped out to the minute, including delivering an important report for your boss. Now imagine an urgent customer request comes through. Perhaps you’ve already gone above and beyond for this customer. How do you respond? If one of your company core values is to “Go the extra mile to create the best level of service”, the answer is easy.
You can take care of the customer request with confidence, because your boss will also have ownership of the same core value. So your boss is almost certain to reinforce your decision because the core value guided you. That’s what it is there to do.
While this may be a simple and obvious example, there are other, less obvious situations that arise where having actionable company core values provides a clear choice when faced with many dilemmas.
Good Company Core Values Serve As Hiring Advisors
Your company's core values are hiring advisors.
Unfortunately, sometimes they’re firing advisors, because it’s critical to have people who share enough of the same core values that they can be successful together.
The more you can outline specific behaviors that are easy to encourage, the easier it’s going to be to see both of those situations immediately.
With that clarity, you use your company core values to help assess whether someone is enough of a culture fit to help your company and have a great experience.
Good Company Core Values Are High-Fiveable
Good company core values are high-fiveable.
You’re able to see them in day to day behaviors and reinforce them when they occur.
Whether that means giving someone a high-five, a double high-five, or a fist bump, even small celebrations reinforce culture in a simple, meaningful way.
There is even evidence that giving high fives in this manner increases performance.
Good Company Core Values Serve as Performance Coaches
Clear, actionable company core values become performance coaches.
You can use them to outline areas in which to improve - in this case the company core value is that area. And you can use them to celebrate and reinforce in quarterly conversations or performance reviews.
The business operating system EOS codifies this into a tool called the “People Analyzer” where each individual is given a “+” for consistently exhibiting a given company core value, a “-” for failing to exhibit a company core value, and a “+/-” for inconsistently exhibiting a company core value. ,
Alternately you might score a person 1 in place of the “+”, 0 in place of “+/-” and -1 in place of “-”.
Whatever system you use, gauging someone's consistency with a core value rewards and reinforces the right behaviors, while providing clarity on specific areas in which to improve. And if you are following the other guidelines, people will experience what “good” looks like, because others are being celebrated when they exhibit the company core value.
More on company core values from ResultMaps:
📚 How to choose your company core values
📚 Key takeaways on company core values from Patrick Lencioni’s work