Are strong values destroying your company?

Photo via Unsplash.

By Johnathan Nightingale

Values are great. You should definitely have some.

Great leaders are clear about their values. That clarity attracts talent and improves results. If a vision is the company’s reason for being, values are what govern how we get there. Apple is clear about theirs. So is Tesla. Google has replaced Don’t Be Evil with “You can make money without doing evil.” 😒 Less inspiring, maybe, but clear just the same. These companies don’t always live up to their values. But they aspire, and I like aspiration.

So anyhow, yay values.

There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

Here’s the thing, though. Every value you commit to has the power to ruin you. The more forcefully you proclaim them, the more you set yourself up for failure. You can prevent that failure, but only when you recognize the forces behind it. Two things make this difficult:

• Every value eventually grows a vicious downside. It’s usually not the living, breathing values that hurt you. It’s the ossified values that you one day discover have grown malignant.

• Organizations have an allergic response to value change. When a leader tries to mitigate the downsides of a value or its interpretation, people feel like the value is under attack. Values are moral concepts, so the response to this change isn’t strategic or reasoned; it’s outrage.

I want to talk through a few examples here. Just a few, though. I will miss some of your values. Don’t be fooled into thinking you’re exempt.

1. We have a flat structure, anyone can talk to the executives about their ideas

More than 90% of startups I talk with have some version of this value. It’s got a lot going for it. It distinguishes us, as an employer group, from banks and other megacorps competing for technical talent. It supports the need of early stage startups to learn constantly and to gather in as many inputs as possible. And it flatters founders and other executives to believe they are accessible and down to earth.

As your organization grows, though, it starts to hurt. The number of interactions grows, and your leadership team gets pulled into hundreds of tactical and procedural conversations. As a result, they will start to be selective about who they make time for, creating informal power structures and cliques. Even still, they are too time-sliced to elevate. They don’t have the time to really think through the strategic, long-term direction of the organization. Which is their job. No one feels good about how this is going.

At some point, it tips. Your executives get assistants and closed-door offices. Everything starts to happen through calendars. New hires see this structure and assume that executive attention is precious and special. This sets off an allergic response among long time employees. They talk about how corporate things are now. It saps morale. Your values statement becomes an ironic joke for these people who see the current state as hypocrisy.

Sound familiar?

2. We hire the best and brightest. We encourage honest and open discussion to get to the best ideas.

I see this kind of value more often when dealing with leaders who come from academia. Personally, I’ll take strength of group execution over individual smarts, but I don’t fault folks who want to have smart people working on big ideas. When you assemble a critical mass of brilliance around your organization, really breakthrough things become possible. And nothing attracts smart people like the opportunity to work with other smart people in a culture that values smart.

As your organization grows, though, it starts to hurt. The PhD style of discussion that develops is a crucible. New ideas are torn apart and burned down to see if they can withstand critique. The value placed on smart creates an incentive for competition, and so people start to get torn apart and burned down, too. The people who can stand this kind of honest and open start to look a lot alike. Mostly men, mostly with enough privilege to have advanced education that trained them on this form of conversation.

At some point, it tips. Salaries climb to retain your increasingly entitled brain trust. The flight of what little diversity you had prompts leadership to bring in more HR support and soft skills training. In response to this rise in political correctness, employees become more aggressive. Disagreement, and even requests for respectful communication, become a mark of dumbness. Anyone else with a good idea either keeps it to themselves, or works on it in private for as long as possible.

Am I getting warm?

3. We’re not here for the money, we’re here for the mission

This is a value every non-profit explicitly takes on, but many for-profit organizations trumpet some version of it, too. Some do it to appeal to investors, customers, employees, or the media but many of them really do believe it. Either way, it works. The best people are motivated by things beyond money. The focus on mission lets your people be creative. It gives the media and your investors a great story to tell on your behalf. Yes, the organization has to pay its bills and please stakeholders, but it feels good to tell a mission story. It feeds your soul.

As your organization grows, though, it starts to hurt. There are lots of ways to advance the mission which vary wildly in their revenue potential. Your mission is unique, so most of the metrics you use to measure success are idiosyncratic and hard to calibrate. Even with mission as a North star, alignment between teams suffers because there’s no backstop or reality check. Staff who under-perform are insulated from consequences because their role is so mission-focused.

At some point, it tips. While your team is chasing unfocused definitions of mission, your burn rate grows. You start to measure initiatives based on their contribution to revenue, or at least sustainability. You have all hands meetings and spend an immense amount of time to explain the obvious, that our mission can’t happen without cash. The old guard sees this as a moral failure. Some folks get it, but a deep schism forms between idealists and pragmatists. The idealists quietly call themselves the only real members of the organization.

Ever been in this kind of organization?

And so forth

I gave you three examples, but the list goes on. Years before I wrote this, Shanley Kane wrote her phenomenal “What your culture really says” and her points are all still true. Spend the $10 if you haven’t read it yet.

It’s easy to spot the double-edged values once you start looking. Because all values are double-edged. Every value statement draws a line through the world and says, “We want to be on this side, not that side.”

We want to be like these people, not those people.

But it’s silly to imagine that those people have no wisdom to add. It’s juvenile to think that your way is completely superior, and gives up nothing of worth. Of course you’re giving things up. Good values just let you be clear about which trade-offs you’ll make.

Yay, Values?

I still think values are great. I’m happiest at companies that are clear about them, help new team members learn them, and support everyone in living by them. My challenge to you, when writing your organization’s values, is just to think them all the way through. Here are a couple of gentle shoves, in case they help:

Define most of your values in the positive space. It’s a small difference, but it matters. An org that says “We care a lot about X” has a much easier time introducing Y and Z than one that says, “We care about X more than Y.” Or worse, “We’re about X. Not Z.” The clarity of the negative space is useful, but only for things you’re ready to kill the company for, rather than accept.

Ask yourself the real cost of each value and whether you’re willing to pay it. I’d rather you have fewer values and stand behind them, than to see you list off 20 and slowly whittle them down as you realize how expensive they are. If you think the trade-off for a given value is negligible, you’re not thinking hard enough.

Watch out for re-interpretation. As your team gets larger, everyone will have their own spin on what your values mean. As a leader, listen for those and make sure they are still pointed the right direction. In particular, new folk may redefine your values in a more polarized way. Correct them fast. Values can evolve as you grow, but you should not passively let misinterpretation become canon.

When in Doubt, Call it Out

A good value should fit in a tweet. But I’d rather you get it right than get it pithy. It’s okay to add explicit interpretation and notes. The benevolent grace of the world wide web has given us all Headers and Body text; use them. If your header is Mission Above All Else, have the body text talk about how reliable revenue streams are critical to the ongoing success of that mission.

Spell out what you’re thinking as you set your values. Repeat those interpretations whenever you teach or revisit those values. And when a value paints you into an impossible corner, admit it and have the conversation head on. It’s good for you, and essential for your team. Do it well, and you might make it out alive.