How to Make Your Company Values Work for You

This is the second in a two-part series about creating a system that maps your company’s values to expectations to performance criteria in a way that promotes accountability and profit.

Defining Expectations

We expect everyone in our company to live our values and meet our expectations, but we felt that we needed to define some criteria for each expectation. The common and role-specific criteria are what we are rated against for promotions and continued employment with our company. This criteria also answers the question “Why didn’t I get promoted when I’ve got a degree, A-Z certifications, and have worked here for 5 years?” There’s much more to a job than those things; it’s the value you bring to the job, and that value is what we are trying to define and measure with this matrix.

Common Criteria

We defined a set of common criteria for everyone regardless of their role. Some of these are:

Core Value: We Invest Deeply in Relationships
- Core Expectation: Communicate Effectively
  - Common criteria:
    - Use a collaborative approach for all solutions
    - Document appropriately
    - Strive to add value in every customer and partner interaction
    - Strive to have the courage to say what needs to be said, while being respectful
Core Value: We Support Diversity and Community
- Core Expectation: Be a Great Teammate
  - Common Criteria:
    - Help each other meet expectations
    - Communicate with empathy
    - Respect people’s differences
    - Promote accountability
    - Rate people on results
    - Mentor others
Core Value: We Support Business Strategies
- Core Expectation: Dazzle our Customers While Maximizing Profits
  - Common Criteria:
    - Respect and maintain confidentiality
    - Do not compromise security or standards for the sake of convenience or expediency
    - Seek to acquire higher levels of technical / professional expertise
    - Set expectations and keep your commitments
Core Value: We Display Enthusiasm and Have Fun
- Core Expectation: Fully and Actively Engage
  - Common Criteria:
    - Be genuine
    - Be curious
    - Assume responsibility for your own learning and advancement
    - Fix it, don’t work around it

Role Specific Expectations

We then went on to define role specific expectations that map to each core value / expectation pair. For example, our NOC communicates effectively by updating tickets and meeting our SLAs. They show that they’re a great teammate by sharing their knowledge by writing or updating wikis. Our senior engineers show they’re a great teammate by hosting workshops to educate the junior people on a technical topic. Our leadership supports our business strategies by developing and communicating our key metrics. Our admin staff shows that they are actively engaged by anticipating and taking proactive steps to eliminate issues before they happen.

Accountability

Once the matrix of values, expectations and criteria is defined, you can use it to promote and protect your values. Highlight examples of people acting in a way that promotes your values. Call it out in meetings or on the spot. Reference the value and expectation to reinforce the message.

You can and should also use the matrix for coaching sessions. Let’s say someone acted in a why that’s contrary to your values. Let’s say they came across a process that needed to be changed, but didn’t update the wiki or notify anyone. In short, they didn’t take the responsibility to communicate. We sit down with the person, review the incident, and use the matrix to make it clear that they didn’t meet our expectations. We then discuss alternative choices that they could have made and should make if faced with a similar situation. The whole process makes it clear what we expect and removes any conflict.

Leadership is Held Accountable

We’ve set up a system where we rate ourselves and we rate each other. None of us are immune from being rated. I’m rated by the most junior member of the team and my future pay is based in part on that rating. When’s the last time your boss’ pay was influenced by your rating of their performance?

Fiercely Defend Your Culture

You’ve put in a lot of work to define what values are important to your company and you’ve got a system for accountability - use it! Hire people who can be successful in your culture. Coach those who are learning to adapt to it. Fire those who cannot succeed in it. Culture is a living thing and it doesn’t take much neglect for it to be overgrown and strangled by unwanted values and behavior. Your job as a leader is to be constantly vigilant and stop the weeds of discontent before they destroy your company’s culture.

I hope you found this series helpful and thought provoking. I’d love to hear the good and bad of your experiences and get a discussion going. Leave a comment here, or or connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIn to chat there.

I’d like to say thank you to my coworkers who I collaborated with on this project and who deserve a ton of credit for making this a success. JP Pancake and Ilona Ferguson contributed greatly to this project and made it one of the most enjoyable experiences of my career.

becki on Google+