WHAT YOU FEEL: so confused about setting values for my business and creating a healthy culture for my employees to thrive.
PERSPECTIVE:
Regardless of your stage in business, you must set core values that are non-negotiable. When your organization lacks guardrails and guidelines you need to construct boundaries to guide the behavior.
In the beginning, keep them simple and no more than three values. You need to enforce them and that is difficult to do effectively if you have a long laundry list of values or series of tactical things that are not important enough or too difficult to monitor. These are key guardrails for your initial effort, and they will evolve over time.
Some examples of values might be:
- The only criteria for decisions will be what’s in the best interest of the business
- There is a zero-tolerance policy for untrustworthiness
- We will be humble and committed to learning and improving every day.
- There will be no l=tolerance for lack of respect
- We will challenge ourselves and enjoy the ride.
- We will hold each other accountable to our goals regardless of position or title
- We succeed and fail as a team
- We will expect honesty and candor
- We will do more than the customers ask before they ask.
- We have a duty to each other to give our best effort every day.
Put your values on a wall and assign someone to be the “culture cop”. In the same way that culture will develop negatively if no values are set, once they are in place and visible, they will become second nature.