Company Values are generally a bunch of nice things and you look at them and think well yes thats nice.<p>A more interesting question, I think, is what other Values (that didn't make the list) the Company is prepared to let slide in order to achieve the official ones that did make the list. If you are optimising for some specific set of values, that must mean you are prepared to let other unnamed ones slide a little.<p>e.g. to achieve 'Kindness' you might need to let 'Consistency' slide, and so on.<p>So what Values is a company not prioritising? Thats a much more interesting discussion.<p>edit: Lets have a worked example, make this a bit more concrete.<p>Lets say Organisation X is a community interest company and has the following values:<p>* Leadership<p>* Excellence<p>* Collaboration<p>* Integrity<p>* Commitment<p>What a lovely bunch of values. Who wouldn't want to adopt those?<p>But whats more interesting to think about is "what are they prepared to compromise to achieve those values?":<p>e.g. if Commitment is an important value, does that mean Flexibility is not valued so much? Because surely if you are committed, you lose flexibility.
Or if Collaboration is an important value, does that mean 'Delivering things on time' is less valued? Because collaborating with everybody takes time to organise.
I worked at a startup that structured their values to be explicit tradeoffs between two equally valid choices generally, but where one choice was more valid for the startup.<p>For example, we held something to the effect of "We value open disagreement and direct communication more than harmonious relations" This was a great value: the company needed to have tight OODA loops and that did not permit beating around the bush. People had differences of opinion and they needed to be able to express them and come to conclusions. In other orgs it could have been valid to have a get-along attitude if things were more important to keep steady (a successful and functioning business unit, for example, might prefer to keep going steadily without rocking the boat).<p>At the same time, the company also said "We value thinking things through from first principles rather than re-applying what has already been done elsewhere." This meant you couldn't justify a decision on "well we did it that way at company x", you had to have a good reason to do something a certain way. This cost us time (unlike the previous value) because decisions or designs could be challenged for not having a good justification. The upside was that it led (I think) to better designs, and encouraged people to debate bad decisions before making them.<p>We didn't have any values that looked like "honesty" or "excellence". That was nice.
This subject and the utter vagueness of the values presented here require me to bring up Bryan Cantrill's talk, 'Principles of Technology Leadership'.[1] He gives Amazon a lambasting over their core principles, and Uber even moreso.<p>It's both funny and sobering to examine how what seems like a useful and valuable foundation ends up being flimsy and easy to ignore when made vague enough.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QMGAtxUlAc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QMGAtxUlAc</a>
I've always enjoyed the word <i>shenanigans</i> yet I've never known where or how it originated. Rabbit hole.<p>Merriam-Webster tells us: <i>The history of shenanigan is as tricky and mischievous as its meaning. Etymologists have some theories about its origins, but no one has been able to prove them. All we can say for certain is that the earliest known use of the word in print appeared in the April 25, 1855, issue of San Francisco's Town Talk. Although the "underhanded trick" sense of the word is oldest, the most common senses in use now are "tricky or questionable practices" (as in "political shenanigans") and "high-spirited behavior" (as in "youthful shenanigans").</i>[1]<p>First use in 1855. Cool. I wondered what that first context was. So I used the site Chronicling America to find the April 25th, 1855 issue of Town Talk. But along the way I found earlier uses in the August 18th, 1854 issue of the Nevada Journal[2] and February 3rd, 1855 issue of the Sierra Citizen.[3]<p>I still don't have the definitive etymological answer but what the web allows a layperson to usefully research in 2019 is astounding!<p>[1] <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shenanigan" rel="nofollow">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shenanigan</a><p>[2] <a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026884/1854-08-18/ed-1/seq-1/" rel="nofollow">https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026884/1854-08-1...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86058097/1855-02-03/ed-1/seq-3/#date1=1789&index=0&rows=20&words=Shenanigan&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1855&proxtext=shenanigans&y=12&x=17&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1" rel="nofollow">https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86058097/1855-02-0...</a>
The Twilio API includes a X-Shenanigans header on every request, always set to "none", of course :)<p>> $ curl -I <a href="https://api.twilio.com" rel="nofollow">https://api.twilio.com</a>
Values are levers for a group of concepts. You can hook that lever up to teamwork or frugality or toe-stepping, and suddenly it's easier to inject these concepts into any discussion throughout the company.<p>Of course, who gets to pull these levers and when is a completely separate issue. As usual it's up to the leadership whether any values are used in a healthy or unhealthy way. Does frugality apply when an employee wants an ergonomic keyboard, or when a VIP flies business class? Does be-humble apply when negotiating compensation or to the CEO's vision?<p>Amazon, for example, is famous for weaponizing frugality and disagree-and-commit against lower level employees. At $OldJob I got to watch a director pull the move-fast lever whenever his team wanted to ship, and the safety-first lever for other teams.<p>Written values can't really be good vs bad. They are more like a tool, and will be used for good or evil depending on who is operating them.
> draw the owl<p>"The rest of the fucking owl" is a meme about laughably incomplete instructions, in case you didn't catch the reference: <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1272765-how-to-draw-an-owl" rel="nofollow">https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1272765-how-to-draw-an-owl</a><p>"Draw the owl" is a pretty ironic rule, because it's horribly incomplete itself unless you're familiar with that particular meme.<p>I wonder how many people work at Twilio who have heard "draw the owl," and know it has something to do with being consistent, but has no idea what it means or why it seems to be clear to everyone else?
I'd really like to make a service that's like a fail-safe for company values. Something like:<p>The CEO/management puts half (or more) of their salary into some account, and at the end of every month the employees decide whether or not the company is going by its values. If not, certain charities which represent those values are given the money.
Its usually a failing of the business to not communicate it better but values are one of the inputs to create the culture you want at a company. The best version of this Ive heard is that “culture is the right people living their values”. Done well, it makes it easy for people to hold themselves and each other accountable. It makes hiring easier, sets tone for communications, branding, etc.<p>Its super important for it to be explicitly stated. The difference amongst companies not explicitly stating their values and ones who “wander” is documented.
Helped form these at my former company, so I'm biased. But the memorability and thoughtful definitions really helped these stick (to this day):
<a href="https://www.entrata.com/company/values" rel="nofollow">https://www.entrata.com/company/values</a>
Our company values are captured in our "Tao of Linden" - <a href="https://www.lindenlab.com/about" rel="nofollow">https://www.lindenlab.com/about</a><p>They've changed a bit in the 15 years I've been there but happy to say we still try to live by them today.
Remarkable that this druck is ranked on HN alongside news of Facebook's latest garbage shenanigan but very successful ploy, and Strategery's analysis of Google's latest garbage shenanigan yet very successful ploy.