What are your organization's core values?

The second of five fundamental questions:

A Cause Greater started a new series of blogs in 2022 called “Five Fundamental Questions That Unlock Your Organization’s Future Value.” Last month we unpacked the first question: Why Does Our Organization Exist? We also created some space to understand more about our role in stewarding the answer to that question.

This month, we are going to tackle one of the most misunderstood organizational development questions: What are our organization's core values?

This question is often misunderstood because the word values has many meanings. Webster’s cites eight different meanings. In my work with organizational leaders, I notice that they often define their values as “the things I hold dear.”  While true, that is not a helpful definition when we want to understand and name our core values.

Core values are those foundational and cultural cornerstones that guide how you behave as an organization. They’re the things you do without even knowing you are doing them. We often refer to these values as your organization’s “DNA.” It’s the stuff that determines how you behave as an organization, how you show up in the marketplace, your underlying motivation to live out your mission, and in your unique way.

It is what makes Apple Apple, Harvard Harvard, or a community foundation your community foundation. 

In July 2002 Patrick Lencioni wrote an excellent article in Harvard Business Review called “Make Your Values Mean Something.” In it, he created a framework for distinguishing between multiple types of values. This framework has been helpful to countless clients as they seek to gain clarity on their core values. 

Lencioni’s framework distinguishes between aspirational values, permission-to-play values, accidental values, and core values. Knowing our core values is fundamental because it helps us to understand our unique place and perspective within your  marketplace, industry, or sector. Your approach to service matters to your customers, and knowing that about yourself is essential to unlocking the future value of that approach. 

Your organization’s future economic value is created through these core values.

Not long ago I worked with an organization to help them clarify their core values. One of their long-standing core values is “Connected Through Relationships.” Living out this core value meant a lot of things for the college.

As an example, living out this core value meant that the college's faculty were connected to local business and industry leaders through a relationship. This relationship created the space necessary for the college to better understand what local businesses needed from new employees (i.e. their students.)

Living this core values also meant that the college took the time to authentically listen and then develop academic programs that fit the current and future needs of local employers as well as their graduates. Otherwise there would be no relationship...only a connection and without both, a signifiant loss of value.

These are examples of how your core values create future economic value for your organization. If our core values only deal with what is currently being accomplished (our current academic programs in this example), we are not going far enough. As leaders we must also look to how these behaviors help us create future economic value (such as new academic training programs) that will position us to thrive for years to come.

Now is the time to get clear on our core values, leverage them, communicate them, train on them, hire based on them, and live fully into them!

With one foot planted on your purpose (your mission) and the other foot planted on how you behave (your core values), you are able to stand firmly and stretch towards the future vision of your organization. Which is question #3, which we’ll explore more fully next month.

Until then, if you would like to talk more about how to identify your organization's core values, please call and schedule a 30-minute discovery call with me. As always, I'd be honored to listen and learn more about your organization and the core values you hold dear.

Please feel free to call me at 616.516.9870 or email me at lons@designgroupintl.com.

Walking alongside you,

Lon L. Swartzentruber
CEO, Design Group International
Senior Design Partner