Beyond Corporate Clichés: Crafting Meaningful Company Values and Vision
Have you ever been through an exercise to define a company mission vision and values and spend days staring at the wall or banging your head up against your table or just feeling like you're been lost in the abyss or you know maybe you have a mission vision values already and it's the normal corporate gobbledygook you know, nonsense. It means absolutely nothing that could apply to any business anywhere in the world at any time, which I think is probably the default. Or you have this really lofty aspirational kind of message that you, you know, might see on, like, a poster somewhere with, like, a peep you know, was a really good one. Motivation posters. Oh, everybody in, like, a rowboat rowing the same way and being, like, teamwork.
Speaker 1:You know, it's wonderful. You know, we've gone through a mission vision values, recently. And going through the exercise of it just reminded me of how completely nuts this is. And and the first question you, of course, run into is like there's a certain level of like, let's just say, you know, values. You know, do you really need a document?
Speaker 1:Right? So like, you know, honesty, integrity, trustworthiness, you know. If you're hiring retail workers, do you really need to define a core value of saying that you're not gonna steal from the company? Like like, you know, and I've seen these companies less values of being like, you don't steal. And that's a pretty fundamental, I think, something disconnected at that point.
Speaker 1:You know, I do believe that there is a a fair amount of, like, table stakes of, like, baseline integrity and, like, you know, value. Like, you're gonna be nice to people. Do you need to define this in your company values? Like, we're nice to people. What industry are you in that you're defining your value as we need to be nice to people?
Speaker 1:So what helped us go through this exercise was redefining values, not as something that was that was, like this aspirational, like this is what we're trying to, you know, achieve more defining values as something that you would be offended if somebody accused you of not doing. Right? So, like, if somebody accused me of, I'm I'm an Eagle scout. Right? So from, my my oldest son is now a Tiger cub scout.
Speaker 1:So I'm going through it with him and we're practicing. We're talking about the scout, you know, the motto and the oath and the law and what that actually means. And, you know, he's he's 6 years old, and I started this as well as 6 years old. I'm much older than 6 at this point, but I've lived my entire life, my entire conscious life with this, like, base framework of things being bred into me. You know?
Speaker 1:Boy Scout motto is to be prepared. Right? Like, I cannot like, if if I am going somewhere and I don't feel like I'm equipped to handle and to deal with different potential situations. Like, I feel very uncomfortable. Like, it's it's a it's a big problem for me.
Speaker 1:You know? Emergency preparedness at our house is a big thing for me. Right? It's just it's just core to my nature. Anyway, so, you know, if somebody, if if, you know, I was accused of not being trustworthy.
Speaker 1:Right? Like, that's a pretty aggressive assault on my core psyche and framework as a person. And I didn't invent this idea, by the way, of, like, the I don't wanna say, like, anti values. But, like, you know, what are your core values for a company that if if somebody what was working for you of or if if you as as the company or an employee was accused of not adhering to or not doing or not being, that it would be so reprehensible to you that you would be offended, freak out, you know, and and have, like, a esoteric crisis. Right?
Speaker 1:That's a value. That is your actual value for your business that you wanna adhere to. Right? You know what else is a value? A value is something that you are using to make hiring and firing decisions from.
Speaker 1:You know, a retail employee stealing from the cash register, if you caught that, what happens? You separate that employee immediately. Right? Like, there's not, like, a counseling session or performance improvement plan. It's just like you violated a core tenant and and, you know, you know, value you know, like, there's just like, you you can't steal.
Speaker 1:Right? Like, you can't you can't have access to a cash register and steal. Based on on what your business is and what you are and what you're doing, you probably already know what these things are. You know? What our behaviors were if they maintained would be a would be separation.
Speaker 1:You know, would would be like this is just not a good fit. You know? Like, you know, you hear companies that have rules to say, like, you know, don't hire assholes. Right? Like, don't be evil was another one.
Speaker 1:Right? Like, that's a great aspirational thing, but, like, define evil. That's the other thing. You have to be able to find these things and have, you know, a very specific, you know, behaviors around them. Like, don't be evil.
Speaker 1:Like, what's evil is is manipulating, is giving Apple 1,000,000,000 of dollars a year to be a default search engine for all iOS devices sold worldwide. Is that evil? Like, I don't know. You're you're squeezing out competition. Like, is that evil?
Speaker 1:Like that. So, they need to be specific, and they they need to elicit a response from you that if if somebody if if you're if you don't adhere to him, if somebody accuses you of not hearing to them, or if you find an employee that doesn't live by that, that it is a simple, easy, like, you know, employee research. Oh, you know, we're we're we're going through and we're we're, you know, we're reviewing Bob's performance. And, you know, Bob's a great worker, but he you know, there's just this one thing and, you know, he does did, like, blah blah blah blah blah. And, like, that should just be, like, you know, nope.
Speaker 1:You don't you don't meet our core values. Like, you shouldn't work here. You know? This is another place There'll be a better fit for you, and we're just not it. You know, your your mission should be aspirational.
Speaker 1:Your vision needs to be specific. Where are you actually going? What are you trying to get to? The reason why your vision needs to be specific is you need to be able to make decisions based on whether or not it it actually achieves your vision. Right.
Speaker 1:And you can go through different exercises and, and, you know, you can use EOS, you can use scaling up, you can use OKRs. You know, you can do vivid vision. You can do a bunch of different things and you can talk about it from like, you know, do you have a 10 year, a 3 year, 1 year? What are your quarters? And the whole exercise and idea behind this is just more like when you wake up in the morning and or when your team wakes up in the morning and they say, okay.
Speaker 1:What do we need to do today? What do we need to do this week? What needs to happen this month? What it needs to happen this quarter? If you don't have a vision in some place that you're tracking to, you're not you're not gonna get there.
Speaker 1:And I didn't mute my my devices this morning, so that's the output. Right? So, anyways, you know, mission should be aspirational, vision should be clear, start on the long one. It's easy. You say you start at the 10 year mark.
Speaker 1:You know, we wanna achieve x. And then when you look at it and say, okay. In order to achieve x in 10 years, we need to achieve we need to do y in 3 years. It means we need to do z in 1 year. And then you start you're backing up, and it's actually a really good filter to run through because, you know, things like, what is the most important thing for us to do this this quarter?
Speaker 1:Well, right now, my quarter is all about, you know, can we scale a repetitive, can we have a consistent and scalable sales process? There's lots of other stuff the business can do, always stuff the business can do. But the only thing that actually matters in that in order to hit our 1 year plan is necessary to hit our 3 year plan or 10 year plan is, can we develop and scale a sales process? Is it repetitive repeatable? Is it scalable?
Speaker 1:Does it work? Does it not work? Nothing else matters. And the clarity that you get out of that is actually very refreshing. It's very it's it helps also as an entrepreneur, as a founder, it helps deal with the, like, like, the impossibleness of what you're trying to achieve and the dread that comes in if you have a really concrete goals.
Speaker 1:Like, I in 90 days, we need to have this done. Maybe you hit it 90 days. Maybe you don't hit it. Maybe it takes you 2 quarters to do it. That's fine.
Speaker 1:But as long as you know what that actual thing is that you need to do, and you're going to that. And, I mean, OKRs again, I don't care what system you're on. Pick a system. Adhere to the system. The system is just about communication to your team and whether you have a process you're following to create and communicate that system.
Speaker 1:So the whole point of all this again was was really about values. Your values should be, you know, let's call it anti anti behaviors, and and you should be able to really identify that. You know? Like, this is the behavior, and this is the standard. And if the standard is not met or behavior is not there, you know, this isn't this is not an an a pull you know, an employment decision that that that should continue.
Speaker 1:Right? You know? It it should just be that simple. Like, we shouldn't hire this person, or we shouldn't employ this person. You know?
Speaker 1:And and it should be clear on both sides, by the way. You know, this is not like a one-sided thing where your team doesn't know what what the values are. Like, they need you know, you know what the values are. Right? This is communicated.
Speaker 1:This is shared. This is discussed. So I'm Max Clark. That's a quick thought on mission, vision, values. We're really on values.
