Company Values. Are you stuck with 5 words and a poster?!
Companies love their values ❤️ ☺️
Which is why organisations have developed a sophisticated process for determining what their values should be.
Step 1
Hire a facilitator and run a retreat workshop.
Step 2
Write down these 10 words on a whiteboard.
Step 3
Discuss. Reduce to 8 words. Discuss.
Step 4
Pick five.
Step 5
Put those five words on your website, ideally on a dedicated Our Values page (in the About Us tab), and print them on a poster and stick them up in the office kitchen.
And so, if anyone ever accuses your company of underpaying staff, destroying the environment, or behaving in ways that appear morally questionable, you can point to the website 👉🏼
Look. Community. Problem solved.
How I discover company values.
I talk to the people who run and actually shape the organisation. The CEO. The leadership team. Key stakeholders. I meet them one-on-one.
I tell them it’s a the red-wine-midnight conversation. When people stop speaking in corporate language and start speaking in normal human language. I ask the questions and take notes:
- What sort of company are you really?
- What do you stand for?
- Would you be missed? If so, why?
- What behaviour is non-negotiable here?
- Why should people love working here on Monday?
I listen carefully to the language people use. Because the language reveals the truth of a culture far better than any workshop exercise ever will.
Then those themes are brought together and reflected back to the leadership team, using their language. And when they see them, something important happens. They say:
“Yeah. That’s us.”
At that moment, the values stop being words. They become commitments.
And when that happens, they don’t live on posters. They start showing up in hiring decisions, performance reviews, leadership behaviour, and everyday conversations.
Because values that are real don’t decorate the culture.
They shape it.
Are you stuck with five words and a poster?
Give me a call.
