integrity is a *ullshit value
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How could IMPACT be seen by two different people?
World peace
Hiroshima
Both are impact.
And that exists out there as a proper value.
Are your values on a file, on your website, or perhaps on the company walls, but then… that’s the extent they reach?
Obviously, the intention that went into them was solid; they did and probably still do call to you.
But then they probably do to 80% of the population, and it’s like an okay yeah, I’m with that type of moment followed by moving on to the next topic.
Why do most company values sound the same?
Today I want to get into two of the biggest failures in business values I see.
They’re vanilla af
They can’t actually be used as a check and balance against business decisions
By vanilla, I mean they’re insanely commonly used; a quick Google of the most common ones include integrity, customer focus, accountability, innovation, and teamwork (or some variation of that essentially mean the same shit.)
But if you read through each of those, you’ll also see that they’re subjective, meaning whoever reads them might see them very differently.👇
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Christine Slocumb built Clarity Quest into one of the top healthcare marketing agencies in the US, and every client on the books wanted her, personally, on every call. Which is lovely right up until a premier healthcare brand turns up, the exact work you built the place for, and you have to tell them no because nobody's free and you didn't hire in time.
So she started firing clients, those running $20,000-a-month ad budgets through the agency, knowing full well she might have to watch a $3M year shrink to $2.5M.
She did it anyway. Narrowed the agency down to three kinds of company, put the brand work up to three times what she'd been charging, and nobody blinked.
Then she went to sell. Three years, five letters of intent, four dead deals.
We get into all of it, including the clause sitting in a lot of service contracts that means you have to go ask your clients for permission to sell your own business.
"Good at Everything, Priced Like It" is out now on this The Art of Positioning Podcast episode - listen here.
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The company values test
Alright, so how do we change this so they’re not over said and unclear drivel?
I run them by this question:
Can and do people say the opposite?
No one is out there claiming, we hold zero integrity! We don’t care about our customers!
You wouldn’t walk into a store expecting poor customer service.
So why should you hold those traits anything above a pure baseline?
What a real company value looks like
Now take for example Basecamp, a value of theirs is "Work Can Wait.”
There’s a clear opposite; hustle culture, working hard = high performance. Businesses can and do claim the opposite.
And it’s clear, it’s non subjective - however you read it, it’ll have different variations, but come to the same thing. And thus the beauty in using the values, because just from that one value they made their stance clear:
Strict, hard cap of 40-hour workweeks
The team are protected from having to answer messages instantly
Working late or working weekends is considered a failure of planning
The second test: would you stop a room for it?
Now there’s a second area that I run values by after passing that first area:
Is it something you’re willing to stand up in a room full of people be it 10, 100, 1,000+ stop everything to call out?
Yeah, that’s the one that usually stops people.
How uncomfortable are you willing to be in exchange for that value?
Think about the most recent piece of content you saw around a strong opinion. There are people in the comments arguing for and against their opinion. There’s reposts of their stuff citing additional opinions.
Now unless they’re out there dropping these people with the sole intention of this will get me viral and the opinion sways drastically from one post to another - this is a great example of when you pass this second test just how strong you can go, because you believe it to be so true that it’s ingrained - at that point you can also start a cult, you shouldn’t, but you could.
Of course I ran these through my own, and they have gone through some adaptions to be where they are now (they didn’t start out vanilla, but they didn’t pass the two tests).
I’m honest with myself enough to say that the first is borderline on the first rule, but with the name of the brand, and rounding out the other two I’m sticking with it.
The Badassery by B values
Mine are B.A.D.:
Badassery
Oxford English Dictionary puts it well - behavior, characteristics, or actions regarded as formidably impressive.
Can and do people say the opposite? Yes. There are companies out there that focus on professionalism over kicking-ass and being badass.
Audacity
The bravery to do the thing that makes your stomach drop, in the face of the temptation to sound/act/be like others.
Can and do people say the opposite? Yes. Caution gets sold as credibility constantly. 'Proven approach.' 'Industry standard.' 'De-risked.’ Whole firms are built on being the ‘safe’ choice.
Defiance
There are enough templates and “shoulds” out there. Defiance is refusing the standard answer, even when the standard answer would do the job ‘fine’ along with every other ‘fine’.
Can and do people say the opposite? Yes, and plenty of firms sell it as the product. Best practice. Benchmarking. Industry standard. Franchise models. Compliance frameworks. Every playbook ever sold is someone charging you for the standard answer.
So how do these look in the business decisions I’ve made?
The language: we’re being down to earth, avoiding jargon
Roo. A kangaroo in sunglasses holding a baseball bat, fronting a consultancy that sells to $10M firms.
The offers are named after a heist - because that’s what we’re trying to do in industries: take back the category. THE TIP-OFF, THE OPERATION, THE VANTAGE, instead of Discovery, Strategy, Retainer.
No corporate. Full stop.
Calling out the ‘fix to everything’ and willingness to say we’re not it.
Hecks, my thoughts in Christine Slocumb's Inc Magazine piece last week were particularly run on that last value.
I’ve seen a *hit ton of articles with standard advice that doesn’t go beyond basic tier advice around a brand or why it’s so important.
If we need to explain why it’s important then you’re not the person, I’d rather jump in there and be like, hey this is how I base positioning and these are the 5 areas I run market positioning against, and something you can go and freaking do right now beyond just ‘be consistent.’ Blurgh.
How many values should a business have?
Keep it under 4; the fewer, the better. Hecks, if you just have one powerful af one, then that is badass. 👏
One last thing. You can run your mission through those two checkpoints, too.
The first test tells you whether your value or mission says anything.
The second one tells you whether you meant it.
So. How uncomfortable are you willing to be?
🦘 B
