You Can’t Add Value If You Don’t Have Values
For new businesses, there are lots of things you just can’t afford financially. Those things are typically (and painfully) pretty obvious. And I’m not just talking about fancy cars, frills, and bells and whistles. I’m talking about fairly basic, but sadly expensive, stuff. The good news, however, is that, as you grow your business, a lot of these kinds of problems will go away. I like to say that any problem that you can solve with a check isn’t really a problem at all – it’s just one of a million different choices you’ll have to make as time goes on.
But there are a bunch of other things that start-ups also can't afford that have nothing to do with money. One of the most complicated and least talked about (in this feel-good, politically correct world we live in) is real values. You absolutely cannot afford to have the wrong values when you're building your business. In a word, you can't be pushing platitudes when you're trying to make payroll.
It makes me sick to read these retrospective (rewrite my life please) articles by people who've made it (sometimes thru hard work; sometimes thru luck; sometimes thru family ties or special connections; and sometimes for no apparent reason at all) talking about how important it was to their success that they had all these Mom & Pop, Apple Pie, and democratic (small "d") values as part of their businesses from the beginning. It's a complete crock. And what's worse is the fact that it can mislead other people into thinking that this is the way the real world works. But it's not.
As sad as it may sound and as bitter a pill as it may be to all the bleeding hearts and social scientists out there that have never run anything, the truth is that you need to adopt the values that are right for your business from time to time. As the joke goes, “These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others.”, but it’s not really a joke. As a new company, you can’t afford the luxury of having grown-up, fancy values when you are fighting for survival. And anyone who tells you otherwise just hasn’t ever been there in the trenches looking right into the bottom or the wrong end of the barrel.
Now I’m not saying, of course, that you shouldn’t have any concrete values, I’m just saying that the values that will make or break your business should and will change over time as your business and your team matures. This is actually a lot easier to show you than to try to describe. But first let me give you a few basics:
- Your core values need to be manageable and realistic for your business.
- Your core values need to be relevant to your business and your employees – not generic, but unique.
- Your core values need to be short and memorable – the shorter the better – ideally they’d all fit on the back of your business card.
- Your core values need to be as simple as possible, but no simpler.
- Your core values need to be repeated constantly and internalized by everyone in the company.
At TRIBECA FLASHPOINT ACADEMY, my college, our five core values are clear to all. We believe in:
Unstinting Effort
Pride of Craft
Courage of Our Convictions
Loyalty
Excellence
Now, here are five core values from a large, mature corporation in our marketplace:
Fairness
Respect
Opportunity
Security
Inclusion
I hope the differences are obvious. Not one of these words conveys any energy or a bias for action. They’re pretty much entirely devoid of emotional content. And even if I knew what some of these words were intended to mean in the way of behavioral guidance, they don’t tell me jack about what makes the company stand up and stand out every day. If you still don’t get it, here’s a visual aid:
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Frankly, I couldn’t build a fire under any group of employees with a stem-winder about inclusion or security if my life depended on it. In fact, in a start-up, attempts at too much inclusion are like ingesting a slow-acting poison that kills your response times, wastes enormous amounts of time and other resources, and almost always leads to mediocre results. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – not every idea is a good idea – not every suggestion is worthy of extensive discussion - and democracy in meetings isn’t really a virtue in and of itself. If I had the choice, I’d rather work for a tyrant any day than for a committee.
Again, there’s nothing terribly wrong with these kinds of broad, vague values, they’re just terribly wrong for a new, young business to try to live by or to live up to. And that’s the real crux of the matter. You’ve got to make your core values real and you’ve got to make them matter or you’re just wasting your breath. Company values don’t break, they crumble slowly over time unless they are actively pursued and nurtured. It’s a slippery slope and only you can stop the constant threat of erosion.
So, assuming you’ve got the right ones for your company’s developmental stage and size, how do you protect and promote them? Three basic rules:
- Make your company values aggressive and demanding
- Make them inflexible and uncompromising
- Be totally intolerant of breaches
Once your values start to slide, it’s almost impossible to recover. And believe me nothing is more central to your company’s culture and your ultimate shot at success than getting this process right. You’re the values cop.
And nothing is harder because it’s NEVER easy to say what no one wants to hear and it’s the easiest thing in the world to give someone a temporary pass or to overlook something in the moment when you should jump on it. But remember two important things: (a) past sins never vanish, they just wait; and (b) you can’t talk yourself out of problems that you behave yourself into. You’ve got to insist on the proper behaviors and the proper attitudes and stick to your guns.
It’s your job – it’s not fun; it’s not easy – if it was, we’d all be making $12,500 a year – and it’s a constant process that requires continual vigilance.
To make your core values stick, you’ve got to be prepared to take it to people every day and insist that they get on the program or go somewhere else. Don’t confuse someone’s good manners with their willingness to change their behavior – you need to make sure that their commitments aren’t just words - and that their apologies aren’t just lip service. Any apology not accompanied by a change in behavior is an insult.
PP: “You Get What You Work for, Not What You Wish for”
