I've become pretty cynical of company principles and values. My experience of this is that it's usually an exercise of leadership getting together and coming up with a bunch of things they wish they were, then putting them on the wall as if it makes them true. In reality though it's really hard to make these things true.
There’s a good model by or popularized by Patrick Lencioni that I’ve rarely seen. It sorts values into aspirational, accidental/historical reality, permission-to-play (I.e. mandatory values in your industry), and the rest. According to the model, the rest are the only good ones. You rarely see them because the other three types are easy and safe to say to leadership.
> In reality though it's really hard to make these things true.
Yeah, the best example I saw of this was:
* a small company (under 50 employees)
* a very deliberate values gathering process across all the employees, not just senior leaders
* performance reviews and spot bonuses tied to values sightings
* regular review of how the values fit with current efforts
Just like anything else with a group of people, it takes a lot of work to get it right. Inertia is powerful.
It's especially funny when a two or three person company writes something like this ... But it's perfect if you want to be a consultant to a major university.
A few years ago I participated in a committee of individual contributors tasked with proposing a set of core values to management (who would then integrate it into their core values and propose it to execs…who would then integrate it into their core values and propose it to the PE Board and…)
Not sure what happened between us and the other nodes on that telephone game but these exact four “core values” (enron) popped out.
A couple years later, 100% of the ICs on that committee are still around. Most of the management layer and nearly all of the exec layer are gone.
I've become pretty cynical of company principles and values. My experience of this is that it's usually an exercise of leadership getting together and coming up with a bunch of things they wish they were, then putting them on the wall as if it makes them true. In reality though it's really hard to make these things true.
There’s a good model by or popularized by Patrick Lencioni that I’ve rarely seen. It sorts values into aspirational, accidental/historical reality, permission-to-play (I.e. mandatory values in your industry), and the rest. According to the model, the rest are the only good ones. You rarely see them because the other three types are easy and safe to say to leadership.
> In reality though it's really hard to make these things true.
Yeah, the best example I saw of this was:
Just like anything else with a group of people, it takes a lot of work to get it right. Inertia is powerful.It's especially funny when a two or three person company writes something like this ... But it's perfect if you want to be a consultant to a major university.
The Four Official Core Values:
- Respect: Treating others as one would like to be treated, while explicitly rejecting ruthlessness, callousness, and arrogance.
- Integrity: Working with customers and prospects openly, honestly, and sincerely, and honoring commitments.
- Communication: Maintaining an obligation to talk and listen to one another, believing information is meant to move people.
- Excellence: Demanding the very best in all operations and continuously raising performance standards.
-Enron
A few years ago I participated in a committee of individual contributors tasked with proposing a set of core values to management (who would then integrate it into their core values and propose it to execs…who would then integrate it into their core values and propose it to the PE Board and…)
Not sure what happened between us and the other nodes on that telephone game but these exact four “core values” (enron) popped out.
A couple years later, 100% of the ICs on that committee are still around. Most of the management layer and nearly all of the exec layer are gone.
"We build evals that test accuracy, saftey and performance before your users do" -- Gotta fix saftey