Keep Your Core Values at the Center of Your Business

3 ways to ensure a value-centered business

A business that isn’t centered on the core values of the visionary isn’t sustainable. So, as a visionary, how can you ensure your team is as aligned with your core values as we are? Well, good news: we’ve boiled it down to these three steps. 

Start from the beginning

Let's face it, by the time an adult human gets to us as part of their job search, their core values are set in stone. Depending on which expert you talk to, most humans solidify their values before the age of 14. That means the only way we can align our business's core values with our team’s core values is to hire for those core values.

We can teach skills, but for the most part we cannot impact beliefs. We need to hire for the core value match. Quite honestly, that's probably the most important thing we can hire for because, again, we can teach them the skills! A person’s ability to do the job can improve, but the way they view their role and responsibilities is much harder to impact.

Keep them present

Our core values have to be part of our business’s culture. We have to be talking about them, and we have to use them to make decisions. There’s a multitude of ways to bake your core values into your business, but the key is to be intentional.

We've seen our clients use their weekly meetings to highlight a single core value. Some invite a different team member each week to present a core value and lead a discussion about it. Success comes when our teams can identify more than just what a core value is, but also what it means in practice, and how to identify it “in the wild”. 

If we have a decision to make about a difficult client or operational challenge, we can go back to our core values. By letting our core values guide the decision making process, we can make decisions that are aligned for the whole team. This will also give your team an opportunity to see you live the core values of the business.

Reward the good

The simplest way to keep our core values at the center of our business is to reward them. It can be as simple as a high five or a shout out in your Slack channel. It can be a peer nomination for the person that most embodies being “solution oriented,” for example. There's a number of ways that you can reward them and you can do it quietly or publicly. 

These don't have to be huge rewards either. You'll find that, when you have a strong culture, it doesn't always have to be a huge monetary gift or surprise. Sometimes it's just the recognition from peers or a shout out from leadership to let a team member know they’re seen and appreciated. Everybody receives that differently (and I believe it’s important that we know how each individual prefers to receive praise), but we need to give it.

Conclusion

So, let’s review the three keys to keeping our core values at the center of our business. First, we need to hire for them. Once we’ve hired a team that aligns with our values, we need to keep those values present and top of mind. Finally, reward your team when you see them exemplify your core values.