Protect Our Culture (and Values) at All Cost

If you’ve been disciplined enough to consistently (and fanatically) follow the simple framework for instilling the core values you’ve defined into your organization’s culture, I have no doubt that your grass is at least starting to be incredibly green - to anyone on either side of the fence. And the steps you’ve taken will serve to eliminate even the slightest perception of that green grass being over top a septic field, at least for anyone being remotely honest with themselves. 

That said, a reality every leader will face at one point or another is the need to deal with individuals who simply don’t hold the same values. I’ve shared examples several times to this point detailing how some of the best leaders and business owners I’ve had the privilege of supporting have passed up extremely talented candidates because they didn’t feel like those candidates matched their organizational values. The challenge is that even the most comprehensive interview process will only reveal so much. 

Jack Welch, the for CEO of General Electric who was know for his keen ability to identify and hire great candidates, once said that even the best only make the right hires fifty percent of the time. I’m certainly not going to argue his numbers. While I’ve never considered myself to be the best at interviewing or identifying great potential team members, I do believe I’ve gotten really good at it by doing it A LOT. Like anything we do often enough, recognizing a match with our values is a skill we can develop. Even then though, there will be times where we miss a glaring flag or we just get it wrong. There will also be times where something changes in a team member’s life and they no longer align with our core values - even if they did for years prior.

Regardless of when we recognize the mismatch, how it comes to our attention, or when in the relationship it occurs, part of our responsibility as leaders is to address it directly and swiftly. Earlier, as I emphasized that expectations without accountability are empty talk, I made a point that I’ll revisit once more because it’s so often misunderstood: addressing an issue that isn’t aligned with our core values doesn’t always involve formal disciplinary action. In many cases, a team member missing the mark has - at least in their mind - a very legitimate reason for their action. But we absolutely must discuss it, explain the mismatch, and detail what we need from them moving forward. We’ll also need to be clear about the path they’ll be choosing if they don’t make the expected changes.

Everything I’ve worked with Craig and Kim on since mid 2021 has been according to the core values they held when they purchased their first business, and have now built all of the businesses around. Even with the exceptionally low voluntary turnover they’ve experience (I can only think of a handful of folks who have left their organizations for other jobs), there have been a few situations where we’ve had to part ways with team members. None of those, though, were decisions we made. In fact, every single one were based on decisions those team members made, continually, that did not align with or represent those clearly defined and consistently exemplified core values. In each case, the decisions were tough on a personal level. But to protect the culture they were working so hard to build, there was no room for compromising around those values.

Although I’ve mentioned Craig and Kim repeatedly through this process, I’m not about to suggest they’re perfect or that their organization is the only one I’ve seen with a strong foundation built on core values. What I will say though is, that as much as anyone I’ve ever interacted with, they’ve been willing to be completely transparent in every issue we’ve discussed and they immediately accept responsibility for any issue that arises across all of their organizations - and all of that has been based on the core values they discussed with me in our first conversation. 

As impressed as I’ve been with the example Craig and Kim have set, they’re not superstars. They’ve just been incredibly consistent (some may even say fanatical) in modeling their core values, they’ve built those values into every possible aspect of what each of their team members do, and they’ve worked diligently to protect the culture they’ve built around those values at all cost. You could go as far as saying they’ve followed a simple framework for building their business on values. The beauty is that it’s something any other leader can apply in their organizations! And hopefully, the steps we’ve worked through here provide you with everything you’ll need to lay your own strong foundation for a business built on values.