For seven and a half years I didn’t have any. Then I got some the fastest way possible, which was also the wrongest way possible.
Let me ask you something, and be honest with yourself. Do you have core values? Or do you have some words on a wall that sound nice and mean nothing? Or do you not have any at all?
No judgment either way, because I am about to tell you a story that makes me look ridiculous.
The confession
For the first seven and a half years of my business, I did not have core values. Part of that was because I did not really see it as a real business yet. It felt more like a job I happened to be in charge of. Then I joined a coaching program, and suddenly everyone was talking about core values. You have to have them. You cannot run a business without them. So important, on and on.
Here is the problem. Every time I asked someone to actually explain what a core value was, I could not get a straight answer. Is it an adjective? A sentence? A feeling? One word or seven? Do I need three of them or thirty-two? My overthinking brain could not land on anything, and nobody would give me a clear answer.
So when that program handed out a sample employee handbook, I looked at the core values printed in it and thought, perfect. If these are good enough for a big company, they are good enough for me. I slapped them straight onto my handbook. Done. I have core values now.
That is not how it works. Just so we are all clear.
The moment it clicked
About a year and a half later I was talking with my good friend Michelle, who has some of the best core values I have ever heard. Have fun. Do the right thing. Make money. Simple, clear, and they actually mean something.
That conversation cracked it open for me. Core values do not have to be one stiff word on a wall. They do not have to sound corporate. They have to mean something, and your team has to be able to live them. Michelle also gave me the exercise that changed everything: stop writing them yourself and start asking the people around you what your company brings to mind.
How we actually built ours
So I put it to my team. I really wanted our name in there, because we are Just Peachy Clean, and I wanted to know what “peachy” meant to the people doing the work. I had every one of them give me words for each letter, words they thought of when they thought of our company. They put real thought and energy into it, and I was so proud of what came back.
Then we voted. And we landed on values we actually believe: we are positive, ethical, accountable, consistent, and we value health and safety. And the last one, the one my team came up with that is still my favorite, is You Matter. I could lose every other one and keep You Matter and still feel good about it.
We hire and fire by them
Here is the part that makes core values real instead of decorative. We live and die by ours.
If a technician shows up with a constantly negative mindset and drags the rest of the team down, that is not a core value fit. If someone cannot own their mistakes or take accountability when we are coaching them, that is not a core value fit. You can teach a person how to clean. You can teach most job skills. You cannot teach integrity, and you cannot teach accountability. People mostly either have those or they do not.
So our values show up everywhere. Every write-up ties back to them. If someone is getting coached for attendance, we do not just say “you have been late.” We say we are Consistent, and you cannot deliver a consistent product to our clients if you are not showing up. Every coaching session, every disciplinary conversation, all of it traces back to our values.
And it is not just the team. It goes for clients too. If a client is not a core value fit, especially if they are treating our technicians badly, they are not the right fit for us, and we will politely help them find someone else. You Matter includes my people.
Why I am telling you this tonight
There is a company near me with really phenomenal employees, and a set of values on the wall that do not mean a thing. You can see it in how the team operates. The company does not stand behind its own values and does not hold anyone accountable to them, and here is what happens when you do that: you cannot get mad when everyone drops to the lowest level you are willing to tolerate.
Their best people, the ones with drive and work ethic and heart, are getting stifled. And if nothing changes, eventually even those good people will settle into doing the bare minimum, because that is all that gets rewarded. That is a sad way to lose good people.
The real test
So here is where I will leave you. What are your core values? Do you have them? Are they unique to you and your company, or did you borrow them from someone else’s handbook like I did?
Then take it one step further. Does your team know them? Because if your team cannot name them, they are not really core values yet. They are words on a piece of paper.
If that stung a little, good. That means it is worth fixing, and fixing it is not as hard as you think.
I built a free download called The Core Values Exercise that walks you through exactly how we did it, from asking the outside question to the acronym, the vote, and the enforcement test that tells you whether you built real values or just decoration. It takes about a week, and most of the work gets done by your team. Grab it free at myprofitpathways.com.