If you are a CEO, three of the biggest pain points you face in today’s business world are:
- Making the best decisions when the answer is not always clear.
- Maintaining a strong and consistent culture as your business grows.
- Attracting and retaining the best talent who are a strong culture fit.
These areas can lead to inconsistency, growing pains and major roadblocks when trying to take your organization to the next level.
Thankfully, there is a simple solution.
In his book “The Core Value Equation: A Framework to Drive Results, Create Limitless Scale and Win the War for Talent”, Darius Mirshahzadeh explains how Core Values will set you up for success.
Core Values give you and your team a framework to make decisions and set performance expectations. This creates the ultimate decision-making engine for your organization, producing consistently spectacular results over time.
Core Values also create an “invisible manager” that sits next to every employee and inspires them to act according to a common set of beliefs, actions, and outcomes – all without hiring a single person.
Finally, Core Values are the best tool out there to recruit and support an army of diehard team members who speak the same language and create consistent results.
Core Values need to become the language of your organization. So, make them stick!
Core Values provide a framework for:
· decision-making
· behavior standards
· how people interact with each other.
· company culture
· work ethic
5 keyways to create sticky Core Values:
1. Core Value advertising – Do not be shy about your Core Values. Display them everywhere, e.g., on the walls, your website, social media, etc. Make it loud and clear how you are leading the organization.
2. Core Value storytelling – Here’s something easy and powerful! Ask your team which team members live your Core Values on a regular basis – weekly and share those stories with your organization.
3. Core Value recruiting and hiring – Incorporate Core Values into your hiring process and connect it to your onboarding. This provides a filter to attract top talent with amazing alignment to your Core Values, as well as warding off potential misfits.
4. Bleeding Core Values – Make Core Values fun and exciting to get your team more engaged in using them. Get creative! Use mascots, symbols, clothing, pens, notebooks, etc. to increase the sticky factor of your Core Values. The sky’s the limit!
5. Core Value communications and awards – Use every opportunity to promote your Core Values: company newsletters, websites, social media, wishing a team member a happy birthday, etc. Present meaningful awards so team members can feel pride and get recognition for living your Core Values.
The key is always to lead by example. When executive and upper management live these values, the rest of the team will as well.