Defining Your Company Values
If your values don't make at least one common business decision harder, they're not values. They're decorations.
The values poster problem
Walk into ten local businesses and look at the values posters. Half of them say some version of: "Integrity, Excellence, Teamwork, Customer Focus." These aren't values — they're table stakes. Nobody writes their company values as: "Mediocrity, Selfishness, Cheating Customers." If your stated value is something nobody would oppose, it doesn't help anyone make a decision.
Real values are the ones where you'd take the hit. Where choosing them costs you something.
The test: does this value force a tradeoff?
Good company values force you to say no to things that would otherwise be tempting. Examples we've seen work:
- "We always say what something costs before we start." Forces you to walk away from customers who want to negotiate after the work is done.
- "We never sell what we wouldn't buy for our own family." Forces you to lose deals where the upsell would help your margin but not the customer.
- "We answer or call back within 4 business hours." Forces investment in systems and people to actually maintain that.
- "We take Mondays off when we work weekends." Forces you to staff and schedule around team rest rather than maximizing weekly utilization.
Where to find your real values (not the ones you wish you had)
Look at the times your business did something hard and was glad you did it. Look at the customers you've fired. Look at the team members who've left and what made them leave. Look at the decisions where you stood by your gut even though it cost you. Those are your values, whether you've named them or not.
Then look at the times you regretted what you did. Cheap shortcuts, cut corners, the customer you took on knowing better. Your real values are the inverse of those regrets — what you wish you'd done instead.
Three to five values, max
If you list 7 values, your team will remember 0. Three is the sweet spot. Five is the absolute ceiling. Each one should be a complete sentence — not a single word. "Excellence" is a poster. "We don't ship work we'd be embarrassed to show the next customer" is a value.
The values audit: do you actually live them?
Once a year, sit down with each of your stated values and answer: "in the last 12 months, when did I — or someone on my team — make a hard call BECAUSE of this value, where the easy call would have gone the other way?" If you can't name a specific instance, the value isn't yours yet. It might be aspirational, in which case you need a plan to actually start living it. Or it might just not be a real value for your business.
How values show up day-to-day
Values aren't really for the poster. They're for the moment a customer asks for something off-script, a vendor offers a kickback, a team member calls in sick on a busy day, a competitor undercuts your price. The values you've actually decided on get applied in those moments. The ones on the poster don't.
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