45. Five Ways Your Core Values Are Just 'Words On the Wall'

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This might be one of my most important episodes of this podcast. I touched on this subject briefly in episode 14 which is actually a video series I made called JAM Sessions.

But today I’m going to peel back the curtain around why so many companies who have core values are failing to make them real and they become nothing more than words on the wall.

#1 Your values are not mentioned - or at best - are just after thoughts in your job postings, your intervies and your new hire onboarding process. 

2. Employees don’t know how they’re doing at their job. 

3. Every high performance workplace has a high level of accountability. Employees who care create lasting impact. 

4. Your Technology and customer management systems are outdated and inefficient.

5. Turnover. Consider the first 4 examples I’ve given you. One of these will cause people to be irritated. Two or 3? People will be frustrated. All 4? Well, your best people will probably move on to something better. When your core values are just words on a wall, you will have higher turnover. Your will struggle to keep talented and  smart people for very long.

Please understand that discovering and defining your core values isn’t something you do in a leadership team meeting or two to check a box.

Just like hiring, if you shortcut it and don’t have an execution strategy to go along with it, they will become words on a wall.

One of the most dangerous things that executives can do to negatively impact your workplace culture is to come up with your core values and and not have a plan or a system to bring them into  your day to day operations. 

So before you take on this initiative, make sure you understand how easy it is to create unintended consequences around your values. It’s entirely possible you’ll do more harm than good.