For the first time in my life, I sat down and thought about my values, under the initial need of understanding our company’s values. Luckily, I was with my business and life partner to help me through it. We’ve both had our values challenged throughout our careers, but never sat down to define them, so in those trying times, we might have reacted in ways that might have surprised people because we didn’t make them clear enough.
We began by having conversations about times when we felt challenged. We detailed out how that felt, how we reacted and why it ‘hung’ on, or as some say now, what was living rent-free in our heads.
None of the conversation was easy, because it was tapping into some pretty personal situations that we didn’t want to relive necessarily, but we’ve both learned that tackling the difficult conversations is where learning really lives.
We’ve let clients go due to a misalignment in values or been told we weren’t a fit. It’s hard to admit when you don’t fit or don’t want to fit into the group that you’d adhered to, committed emotion and time, and it’s intensely scary to face walking out of that village into another. But, we’ve always found that there was a great opportunity to learn from it.
As we were defining our values and starting to really get to some key concepts, an even more uncomfortable thing happened. Shayne mentioned a value that I was a bit annoyed by. Looking back it was a really hysterical moment because he said “patience” and I thought “I really don’t have the patience for this conversation anymore”. Then a light went off. They aren’t supposed to be easy all the time. At times it’s a challenge, that’s why they need to be out in the open, reevaluated constantly, and be open to evolution with the business and team.
I’m reminded of JFK's speech about going to the moon, and that is how I look at our values.
“We choose to go to the Moon,” John F. Kennedy said. “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
Earlier in my career, I’d see value statements that made me sweat a little. I’d think, “I’m not this every single moment, maybe I don’t belong here”.
I don’t think I was supposed to be all those things straight away. I’ve come to realize that companies and individuals don’t always completely embody them - values are what someone judges to be important in life or business, as well as something one aspires to. Values can define approach, but as much as every person is a mix of good and bad, so are organizations. No one and no entity is perfect all the time. That’s why we have to write them down. It’s why we put them on walls to make them visual and constantly remind ourselves of them.
I can’t say that the values we settled on I have always held to without fail. That’s how we came to figure them out. The times in life that we aren’t exactly proud of, the times in business when we were challenged and had to react, withdraw or reset, we asked ourselves “why?”. What word or concept boils down to the action or the feeling? These are values. They aren’t automatically easy, and don’t come just inherently at all, and that’s the point. They are something we work at to become that higher level human or business that we all envision.
Lead with Integrity
Defined as the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness. For us, that’s the patience to hold fast to principles when tired, and the strength to uphold morals when pushed.
We won’t give up culture for revenue.
We will not inflict help. We will respectfully walk away from clients when we see there’s not a true appetite for change. We work based on consent. Some aren’t ready for change and it’s certainly ok to not be - but if they aren’t ready, it wouldn’t be ethical to continue.
Being as fair as we can in business, personal life and to our community.
Leaving things better than we found it whether it’s a person’s outlook on themselves, the planet, or a business’ process or system.
Be Respectful
Defined as a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements. For us, that’s being very clear about the qualities, abilities, and achievements we find and see in others, and ourselves.
We’ll show a lot of gratitude for help, insight, and support, it’s what builds a community and helps us continually learn.
We’ll be honored by those that reach out to us for guidance or trust us to guide them.
We believe in people’s endless capacity to change and to grow, and understand that everyone learns and grows at different rates.
Show Transparency
Defined as operating in such a way that it is easy for others to see what actions are performed. For us, this means openness, communication, and accountability in the face of opposition, fear and uncertainty.
We show our work as much as we can to help others learn, we’re taking the initiative to be clear in our approach so there’s no question how we do things.
We communicate often, perhaps too much, but we value extreme clarity.
We will always be the first to say that we are either wrong, we don’t know, or we don’t agree, all with respect.
To circle back to patience. We didn’t throw it in not because I didn’t have the patience to have the conversation, but found as we continued to throw out words, some of them overlapped, as you might have noticed in ‘integrity’. The definition of our values incorporate a lot of the other terms we threw out and quickly became an interconnected word cloud.
We’ll make these values clearer as we continue to revisit them. Particularly when they are personally or professionally challenged.
Steps we took establishing and how we’ll continue to align our company values:
Come together as a whole team and be open to emotions, stories and ideas that might be uncomfortable. Brainstorm on what everyone feels the company embodies and aspires to.
Revisit them often and be open to their evolution. We don’t expect that these initial values will remain the same forever. They might become detailed, we might surface others, and we’ll certainly rehash them as the team grows.
Make them up front and clear all the time. Put them on the wall so it’s easy to see when you need to realign.
We plan on revisiting our values for now every few months, and along with each debrief on client work to make sure we adhered to them or if we need to further define them.
If you’d like ideas on how to approach setting your values for your organization or team, or even yourself, let us know. We’d be elated to help in any way we can.
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