Hey GirdleyWorld!

We’ve all been frustrated with meaningless “core values” inside of companies.

But I’ve seen the solution in action. So today:

• How behaviors can do what values can’t

Thanks for reading!

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The problem with Core Values

• Communication
• Respect
• Integrity
• Excellence

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Great concepts, but do your eyes glaze over? Mine do.

This could be any business in America.

But guess what? Those “Core Values” belong to Enron.

You know: manipulated financial statements, insider trading, a cutthroat firing policy… even suspending their “code of ethics” so leadership could do shady stuff.

So what happened to “Integrity”?

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Here are 3 big problems with core values:

• They’re not actionable. Of course “integrity” is important. So what?
• They’re not specific. Is “excellence” working a 60-hour week or getting the job done well?
• They’re not complete. You can’t proscribe an entire culture with 3-5 buzzwords. Life’s too complicated.

Core Values should help us make hard decisions. But when they’re written like this, they don’t.

Luckily, there’s a better way. It’s called Core Behaviors.

Core Behaviors

A few years ago, a CEO friend of mine named Andrew was frustrated with his company’s values.

So he introduced a set of 18 core behaviors.

Here’s a few of them (I’ll put the whole list at the bottom).

Using “behaviors” fixes the 3 big problems with the classic Core Value approach.

They’re specific. They’re actionable. And with 18 behaviors listed, they’re closer to a complete picture of how the team operates.

They define the specific actions that are special to a culture — which, in turn, defines who we are as an organization.

Choosing behaviors like this is the first step. Then you need to get people to actually live them.

Next: Andrew’s 4-step process to bring Core Behaviors to life.

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Putting your Core Behaviors into action

To get people to actually operate with his core behaviors, he used these 4 steps:

Define → Introduce → Reinforce → Revise

Here’s how he did it.

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1. Define the Behaviors

Most core values creation has everyone come to a consensus.

Which explains why they’re often worthless!

With Core Behaviors, the CEO writes the first version of them, since they need to embody the behaviors they want for their company.

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2. Introduce the Behaviors

Every Monday, Andrew emailed the entire company every Monday morning.

He’d explain one of the Behaviors, and talk about what it meant to him.

And he’d talk about how he was trying to live it personally.

He did this for 18 weeks, until he’d gone through his whole list of behaviors.

This is key: any Behaviors will fail if the leader doesn’t embody them publicly.

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3. Reinforce the Behaviors

Once Andrew had written about each behavior, members of the team took turns doing the same thing.

One would write that week’s email to the whole company, saying what that week’s Core Behavior meant to them.

On the 18th week, they repeated the cycle.

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4. Revising the Behaviors

Andrew, as CEO, maintains the list of Core Behaviors.

He revises them periodically based on input from everyone.

Sometimes adding, subtracting, and changing.

The behaviors continue to evolve with the company, people, and times.

The results

Replacing Core Values with Core Behaviors has worked wonders for Andrew’s business.

Culture is now driven bottom-up. It has defined a common identity for the company. And teammates don’t tolerate when they see people not living the behaviors.

Hard to beat as an actionable way to define and reinforce company culture.

Just keep in mind: practice what you preach. If the leader doesn’t follow Core Behaviors, why should anyone else?

If you’re interested, click here to see all 18 core behaviors from Andrew’s company.

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3 things from this week

• Appetizer: Did you know I ran a Halloween costume store for a while? It didn’t end well. Got me thinking about the pros and cons of owning a seasonal business.
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• Main: I love a good graphic. Here’s a manager’s guide on what to do with employees, based on their trust vs performance. From Ayman Al-Abdullah’s great thread on hiring.

• Dessert: Frank Lloyd Wright designed a total of one office building. And it’s for sale. The guys on Real Estate Anonymous broke it down last week — give it a watch!​

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Have a great week!

Michael