Values Gone Wrong
I was reminded this week of the importance of consistently talking about core values. Eleven years ago, shortly after we created our core values at Footers, we learned that it was not enough to share those core values once a year and expect our team to remember and abide by them. We realized we had to do more than simply include them in orientation for new hires and paint them on the wall. So we went to work incorporating our values into our daily and weekly routines. We created an acronym (FAB TIGERS) to help people remember them. We would do pop quizzes and give prizes or special recognition for those that knew all nine. We would highlight a value each week and talk about what it means to us at Footers. We made the values the corner stone of our “Jimmy Buck” recognition program. We even named our major annual celebration; The Core Value Awards.
The headline of an article caught my eye this week. It was: “Uber broke laws, duped police, secretly lobbied governments, leak reveals.”
For a company that fundamentally changed an industry and now holds a distinction like “Kleenex” and “Lego” of their brand being used a general term, I was curious to read some of what they did to get there. As you can guess by the headline, it wasn’t pretty. A culture of arrogance, bullying and recklessness persisted within the organization and even acknowledgement that what they were doing
in some cases was illegal.
I’ve yet to find a company that ended up in some hot water and later admitted that they had planned to get there all along. Companies start with good intentions and values and at some point those values are tested and things go off the rails. As we’ve learned with the likes of Theranos, Enron, and Wells Fargo, the behavior of senior executives begins to conflict with the original values and takes the company down a dark path. I was curious about Uber’s core values, so I did a little digging. The interesting thing about Uber to me was that some of their original values, while good in principle, actually encouraged some of the bad behavior. For example: “Principled confrontation (Sometimes the world and institutions need to change in order for the future to be usher in.)” And “Champions Mind-set (Put everything you have on the field to overcome adversity and get Uber over the finish line.)”
You can see how these two values when not kept in check, can be taken to extremes. Not surprisingly the values at Uber have been revised since their new CEO took over and one of the additions is:
”We do the right thing. Period.”
When we stop making it a priority to talk about core values and identify behaviors that are both in line and out of line with those values, we risk the reputation and health of our companies. While we usually only hear about the big organizations, I’ve seen numerous small and medium size companies find themselves in similar trouble when their values are put to the test. Leaders have the great responsibility to uphold and nurture the values of the organization. To make sure that everyone in the company knows those values and to keep them in line with the original intent. I took time this week during our team lunch to remind everyone of our core values at Footers and told the story about how and why they were created. Yes, I’ve done this before, but the article about Uber was a good reminder that there’s no such thing as talking about core values too much.
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