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Your Company Has No Core Values

Every single move your company makes, from the big decisions down to the tiniest details, screams out your core values.

If your values aren't woven into the fabric of your company, then you get what you get.

Chaos, confusion, and a whole lot of head-scratching.

Anyway, I’m stealing this story from here so I can revisit it when the time is ripe. 

Because let's face it, in a year's time, we'll need a little reminder about why the hell those core values matter in the first place.


Wow, I am a loser.  This was the thought that crossed my mind as I sat down. It was 2008 and year three of the coveted BOG program at MIT, and I was in a peer-to-peer workshop led by the co-CEOs of Nurse Next Door, Ken Sim and John DeHart. Ken and John had built Nurse Next Door into one of the most admired companies in Canada. They had done so by creating a company that thrived on its core values. Today, they were testing all sixty of us at BOG to see if we had effectively rolled out the core values in our companies.  “Please stand up if your company has core values,” Ken says.  We all stood up.  “Please stay standing up,” John says, “if you know the core values of your company and can say them off the top of your head.”  Out of sixty of us, thirty sat down—including me. Gut punch. The first thing we learned at BOG was that our companies needed to have core values. It was step one of the program that taught some of the best and brightest entrepreneurs in the world how to manage, grow, and eventually sell their high-growth companies for seven-, eight-, nine-, and even ten-figure exits. We had built Twin Capital Mortgage from a one-room startup to 150 employees in just three short years. Twin Capital Mortgage was the fortieth-fastest-growing privately held company in the United States between 2003 and 2006. We had experienced over 2,500 percent revenue growth. The company ranked number forty in the prestigious Inc. 500 in 2007. The growth of Twin Capital Mortgage was unprecedented.  Today, however, I was to learn a valuable lesson about how little I knew about growing a business. All sixty of the CEOs who were part of the peer-to-peer Core Value Workshop had been in the BOG program for two years. After having two years to roll out core values in our companies, half of us sat down. John and Ken were about to show us who truly had core values in their company.  Let’s make something crystal clear: 50 percent of the people in this room did not know their own core values. The same core values they had created themselves, just as I had. The core values they had rolled out in their organization in year one of BOG, just as I had. The core values that were supposedly what their companies stood for.  The next thirty seconds blew my mind.  Ken was still talking; the questions were not done. “Please stay standing if your employees know your core values and can say them off the top of their head.”  Out of the remaining thirty who were standing, fifteen sat down. Half of the remaining half.  Then John spoke to the group of fifteen who were still standing: “Please stay standing if your customers know your core values.”  And the entire room sat down, except for John and Ken. They were the only two people in our entire class, one night before we graduated, who could truly say they had core values in their company that were alive and well. They, their employees, and their customers all knew their core values.  I was in shock. At that moment, I realized that even among some of the most celebrated, influential, and experienced entrepreneurs I knew, none of us truly had core-value-driven companies.  That’s not to say that we did not have core values in our companies. We did, but they weren’t explicit, and people didn’t know them. I realized that if you don’t know your core values off the top of your head, and if your team doesn’t know your core values off the top of their heads, then you really don’t have core values that are alive and well in your company.  What you have is a group of people showing up every day, potentially doing great work, but doing so in their own way. You have an organization with a mix of different people’s core values. I say this because:  Companies do not have core values; people have core values.  I repeat: Companies do not have core values; people have core values.  When we are not explicit, intentional, and successful at rolling out the core values in our organization, we are forced to settle for a mixed bag of core values that each individual in our company brings to the organization. We get what we get, and we don’t have control over the outcome. This is called inconsistency. If we and our team do not know the company’s core values, then it is likely that we are not living them explicitly and consistently in everything we do. The reality is people are just doing their work based on their own core values. If we have hired perfectly, then this works out. I prefer not to bet on perfection, as this is not a way to scale a business.


PS. Do you struggle to set yourself apart from your competitors? Does your tone of voice lack a little personality? Either way, get in touch and I’ll help you become remarkable. Or get more communication advice that doesn't suck here.

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