Many organisations pay lip service to values. The company values or ethos end up being a stale, irrelevant document that sits on their intranet. But I think if we get values right, they can change everything. I’ve shot a 3-minute video on what you must do to get values to work for you.

I believe all organisation need simple, meaningful values that work for your team and for your organisation. So often, I chat with my clients (whether they’re in a workshop or 1-on-1 coaching session) and they tell me the values of their team or organisation don’t really have a huge impact on them or their performance.

I believe that your values should have a massive impact on the performance of your team. Every team needs some clear, succinct values that they can actually use. I call these ‘simple street values.’

There are 3 reasons why values don’t work:

1. Too complex — There are too many values. As soon as you go over five values, people just forget what they are.

2. Too conceptual — They don’t really have grassroots meaning. They don’t have habits or behaviours attached to them. Also, they are not displayed visually in a picture or model that you can remembered.

3. Too corporate — The lingo or the words around them don’t have meaning for people in a useful way.

So, here are 3 things you need to consider when you’re creating a value statement:

1. Purpose — You need to understand your purpose. That’s your why. Think about words that would describe why you do what you do.

2. Personality — That’s your who. Who are you? What are the words that describe you?

3. Process — That’s your how. How do we serve customers? How do we do what we do?

They’re the three lenses that you need to look through when you’re writing your values.

I’ll give you an example. Our value statement at colinboyd.com.au is simple. It’s got three key values in the middle:

Simple — What we deliver is simple, clear and succinct.
Fun — We add our personality and quirks to it.
Sexy — It’s got slickness to it. It looks clean and it’s aesthetically pleasing.

Underneath that, we have what I call 5 Daily Habits, which are 3-5 daily routines that all of our employees including me have set for each day. Overarching this whole thing is First-Class Experience. If you’re a client with me, everything that we do together is first-class.

Here is the Model of our company values:

QUESTION: Do your values in your team or your organisation work? I’d love to hear it in the comments below.