Values: It's what's inside that counts

Writing a set of values is easy. Development of an authentic set of values that are strategically integrated into your business takes work, planning, and commitment. 

As is the case with a company Mission and Vision, in order for a set of company Values to effectively reap the Return on Investment demonstrated by others with comprehensive Corporate Social Responsibility programs, these Values must pass the strategic, integrated, and authenticity tests. Writing up a list of values, putting them on your website, hanging them up around your business, and giving every employee a copy of them are really just exercises in communications and marketing. If you’re not “living” your values and running all business decisions through the lens of your values, you run the risk of both the marketplace and your employees calling you out.  In other words, you can’t “purpose-wash” your business and expect to achieve success.  One only needs to look at the example of Enron to demonstrate how NOT to implement a values initiative.
 
Source of Values
So, from where does this set of values originate? Is it handed down from “on high” by some universal, good-business deity? Does some purpose-filled CEO write them up on the back of a napkin over lunch? Perhaps a Millennial intern copied them off a competitor’s website?
 
The fact is that your company’s values need to be unique to YOU – your business, your workers, your products or services, and your culture. They should contain aspects of your company’s mission and vision for alignment and consistency. They should address how you will treat your employees, your customers, and any other stakeholders deemed to be important.
 
Therefore, the best way to ensure that your company’s values are, well, valued internally and respected by your external stakeholders is to crowdsource them from amongst the people who know your company best – your employees. A values exercise can be incredibly revealing for upper management and incredibly empowering for your lower-level workers. What is it about your company that makes you unique? You may be surprised what you find out is important.  By crowdsourcing your values from a variety of workers, you will also tend to get away from those “standard” values that, frankly, every business ought to practice and are considered “givens” (safety, high quality product/service, integrity, honesty). Remember, your business isn’t remarkable if you have the same values as every other business or are doing that which is “expected.” 
 
Types of Values
In addition to trying to incorporate aspects of your company’s Mission and Vision into your Values propositions or goals, I would suggest that your values (and I suggest no more than 5-8 values) should reflect any of the following areas:  excellence in your particular field of product/service; community engagement aspirations, treatment of workers and worker expectations/norms; and corporate culture. Values based upon the uniqueness of your particular company will be most authentic.  Lastly, if there are areas of concern around your line of business (for example, conflict minerals, disparate pay, child labor, poor environmental practices, etc.), I would strongly recommend adopting values to address those particular concerns – and then LIVE those values no matter what!
 
Implementation
As mentioned above, a company’s values do zero good if they just hang on a wall or show up on a website. They need to be used. They need to be taught and emphasized to all new employees. The extent to which a worker exemplifies your company’s values can be a metric utilized during performance evaluations. Your values need to be considered when making decisions around supply chain. If one of your values is to pay all workers a living wage, it could be uncomfortable if you’re not considering wages of workers in your supply chain. The same would go for environmental practices. Being sustainable or conscious of environmental impacts is a great company value; not so great if you’re not considering or treating your suppliers with the same level of scrutiny.  In fact, you may quickly find yourself under attack for having “fake” or “insincere” values if you’re not pushing your values through your supply chain, to all of your employees/contractors, and considering all of your stakeholders.
 
Writing a set of values is easy. Development of an authentic set of values that are strategically integrated into your business takes work, planning, and commitment.