I'm a bit bored of how company values are done today. I think there's a better way...

Read down to the P.S. for my favorite new value

One of my core values is never moving if there’s a cat on my lap

Hi! My name is Bree, and I write about how to make work more joyful and less everything. Subscribe for weekly essays on everything from rewiring organizations to cozy teams to living a Portfolio Life.

---

Companies generally define values as these enduring truths about what an organization stands for. It’s a lofty ask, so often this means values end up kind of agreeable and vague and… boring.

What if instead we defined values as a direct translation of strategy? And refreshed them with every new strategy cycle?

For values to be worth the time you spend crafting them, they need to translate to action. When an employee is thinking “should I do A or B in this situation?” values should tell you “A”. They should be the answer to any one employee asking, “Hey company, what do you want me to do here to support the business?”

I’m not a fan of the “art of being a decent human being” values like “integrity”. Integrity should only be a value if a decent number of your employees are debating between acting with integrity or being corrupt assholes on a regular basis. If you work in a corruptible industry, then by all means!

While Facebook’s seminal “move fast and break things” hasn’t aged well, I do respect it for its very direct instruction on how employees should act to support company strategy. If an engineer were sitting at their desk wondering if they should review their code with a fine-toothed comb or just ship it and move on to the next thing, this value tells them: ship it!

This all needs to stem from a strong strategy in the first place, which means making strong choices for the business across many different spectra:

• Risk-loving or risk-averse?

• Bespoke customer care or scaled customer automation?

• Craft or speed?

• Expansive creativity or focused execution?

• Cross-functional coordination or functional autonomy?

• Growth-mode or back-to-basics-mode?

• And many others!

Of course, these will manifest differently by function and require some nuance and evolve over time, but the more you can be clear and consistent with a single narrative of where you’re going and how you’ll get there—the better.

Where companies sometimes get into trouble is “wanting it all” and therefore winding up with a confusing and weak strategy. For example, you can’t choose “craft” AND “speed” unless you also want to make “burnout” one of your values. Leaders have to decide: your engineer is sitting at their desk wondering whether to ship their code or review it again. Speed or craft? Of course each engineer can just choose for themselves, but then you have a whole org that’s a little fast and a little polished, which is generally a recipe for a little success.

So definitely don’t go creating values until you know what drives your business. Relationships? Speed? Precision? Scale? Creativity? Reliability? Care? Affordability? Delight?

If you know me, you know I’m VERY pro joyful company cultures with fun days and cozy teams. But I honestly don’t know if values have much to add here. Maybe because I believe joy at work should be true everywhere, and values are an opportunity to speak specifically to your company. But I don’t know… if everyone is being a butt at work, then maybe something around respect is good.

When have you seen values work best? Is there a company value you’ve come across and totally love? Please share!

—

P.S. This line of thinking came to me in the shower, home of all great ideas. If I’m ever a CEO again or a CPO or otherwise in charge of values, I think I’ll advocate for one of our values to be “Shower twice a day”. Double the good ideas! And no one smells :) A solid strategy if you ask me.

Ha now that I’m thinking about it… how great if people were constantly showing up to meetings with wet hair. They would put “DNB Shower” on their calendars during the day. One of our employee benefits would be a stipend for Olaplex.

What fun!