Yeah. File this under another thoughtcrime I've committed.<p>There was one set of values that my company's CEO wrote up on the fly b/c we were doing reviews for the first time. Those values are _awesome_. They're explicit about the goal of making money, they're explicit about priority, just awesome.<p>The new COO felt like he needed to make an impact so he wrote some new ones. The company I work for also has a very playful marketing tone, and he applied our marketing tone to our company values. The values also aren't explicit-- they are each a complete sentence, but it's fairly vague how they should be applied. Idk. I know it's all bullshit, but I felt like we really had something for a moment. I think that the new generation (I'm 29) is just so tired of being marketed or manipulated that honest "we're here to make money" is a better value than "We should all do what we can to hit our numbers."<p>Maybe this is just a problem that engineers and lawyers have, since we neurotically try to find the inconsistencies and misapplications of statements.<p>[edit] money, not monkeys. Thanks kd :)
Considering I've worked at a place in the past where providing an "excellent work-life for it's employees" was written into the quality policy, but they consistently treated all their employees like crap; I'd be willing to argue that only 27% of businesses believe in their own values.
Firstly: This should be changed to link to the original Gallup article [0] since the submitted link is just a shameless reformatting of their original work (and is harder to read).<p>Secondly: Something I think people are missing is that breaches of company values are part of the ammunition that can be used to fire people. I'd wager that's as much of the purpose of (big-company) "values" as anything else.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/195506/few-workers-apply-company-values-jobs.aspx?g_source=WWWV7HP&g_medium=topic&g_campaign=tiles" rel="nofollow">http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/195506/few-workers-app...</a>
Most jobs are and always will be a chore.<p>But it isn't "cool" to admit it, in job postings as well as in job applications.<p>In my experience "professionality" is also doing your job (and doing it well) also and especially when it's a chore.
Well, I would say that there are the set of company values that get printed on posters and placed in breakrooms. 27% of employees believe in those.<p>But, most importantly, there is an unwritten set of values that rules over those companies. Those who understand those values tend to do well. However, many don't realize this, and the dissonance often leads to a crappy work experience.
The idea that a company can have values is absurd. A company isn't a person. It cannot have values any more than it can have a religion.<p>What the term really means is more like "the CEO's values" or "values as defined by consensus of the people in a subcommittee."
A company's stated values and mission are often at odds with it's revealed preferences. Employees respond to the latter, which show themselves via what kind of behavior gets rewarded/ignored/punished.
Everytime I have worked at a company and HR ships out their new Values deck I just roll my eyes, it could be the single biggest waste of time HR just spinning their wheels.
I would have to first believe that my company actually has values before I could believe that I share any of them.<p>The only corporate value that I ever took at face value was "Make money." I'm not sure who must have had a stroke that temporarily disabled their executive dishonesty gland long enough to slip that into the corporate culture, but I hope they survived it.<p>Literally everything else has been blatantly obvious employee propaganda.
Actually, employees don't give a shit about the companies they work at and they should be treated as such. If it's not their own company all they care about at the end of the day are the money they get (the more, the better), the conditions they get and to complain about every single fucking thing. All this while trying to trick you as much as possible by not being efficient or trying to become better at what they are doing, on their own.<p>So I'd urge owners of companies to hire and fire people quick. There are rarely good people who stay within a company for more than 2 years and who care about what they do. Those people usually become part of it (partners).<p>The rest are just there temporary, so treat them as such: shitty replacement parts.
I guess I've yet to see company values be something more than a generic "be a decent human being" list. Then, you watch all the politics and backstabbing from middle management and the complete cluelessness of upper management and that number seems pretty high to me. I haven't worked at a lot of startups can't speak to those.
In related news: my culture was just shaped by Senn Delaney, a Heidrick & Struggles company. to help me live by my new values, I refer to my provided commitment card daily.<p><a href="http://www.senndelaney.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.senndelaney.com/</a>
I've been through several startups as well as acquisitions. There's a huge difference between learning/acclimating to a set of values that aren't yours versus starting something with a group of people who all share preexisting values. Many great teams and products exist because of the latter. Even so, great teams from the latter camp can have values diluted every time new people come on board.<p>The first startup, I was employee #12. The second startup, I was employee #30. The third startup I joined mid-way through an acquisition. Each of these companies had great aspirations for good values but all failed to trickle them down to individuals. Too much bullshit and too many bodies. As a co-founder of the current startup (<a href="https://www.reamaze.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.reamaze.com</a>), we've purposely kept our team small, tight, and well curated. Instead of constantly hiring more bodies, we think outside the box and adapt to how our business is growing. All this to keep our values and chemistry intact. Just keeping the chemistry alive allows us to build products we and customers love.<p>You simply can't build successful teams, products, or businesses when so few of your employees buy into the real reasons you're doing what you're doing. Sure, you can buy them off with great salaries, benefits, and office amenities, and you may be able to carry that momentum to an exit but there will be miserable people. And if you can't carry the momentum, good luck with the mass exodus. This is why many will say "the day job will always be a chore". A lot of our customers actually come to us for advice on team building, customer service, and culture and we always encourage them to not hire. We don't even encourage them to hire if it's urgently desperate. Instead, hire only when you've met the right match at the right time. Happy to chat to anyone who wants to discuss team building and growing an extremely viable business by intentionally staying small and nimble.
Sad that so many people spend working lives in institutions whose values are unintelligible or not theirs. I worked at a company whose values were clearly articulated and formed a shared vocabulary amongst employees. It can be done. The values were stated at a high level of generality, as they have to be. So applying them in novel cases required interpretation, discussion. In that sense, the principles were not easy to apply. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. The discussions themselves encourage engagement, reflection.