ACE is the acronym for our values: Attitude, Commitment and Excellence. It’s also the name of a program we’ve put in place to make those values come alive.
We’ve put tremendous energy into developing the program and the results are positive: revenue exceeding projections, satisfied customers and low employee turnover. While less measurable, I think it’s also safe to say that our company culture is upbeat and enjoyable.
Most managers would agree that these outcomes are worthy, but making them come alive can be challenging or they do not know where to begin. It can seem vexing, but others have forged a path for the rest of us to learn from.
First, clarify
Business guru Jim Collins once described the following exercise as a way to uncover your company’s values. Ask all employees to pretend that Martians are coming for a visit to learn about your organization.
Employees can’t use words (unless they speak Martian!) to describe your company. Instead, they must point out three employees that the visitors will observe. The employees to be observed must be people who best exemplify your values.
Once employees have identified their three company ambassadors, ask them to use three words to describe why they picked those employees.
This exercise, which we explained as a self-discovery activity, helped my company to uncover our core values: attitudes that inspire others and convey excitement about our work; commitment to clients, each other and our community; and professional excellence.
Two other values emerged, honesty and teamwork, but they were not things that dramatically separated us from our competitors. According to Collins and other business experts, for company values to be meaningful, they must represent a point of difference. So we settled on attitude, commitment and excellence as our most compelling values.
We were gratified to learn that employees were almost unanimous in their agreement that those values were the most reflective of our company’s culture. But getting clarity around the values was just the first step. We also took the time to translate the values into three operating principles, which I define as the enduring ways that we run our business.
For my company, there are three enduring principles that, along with our values, guide our decisions. These are: to dominate the local market by offering a unique combination of technical training and consulting; to be exceptional by hiring great people and landing them great work; and to be different in a way that matters to our customers. Your company’s principles will probably be different but to be effective, they must not compete with your company’s core values.
Now, communicate
Like anything we care about, we must continually reinforce our commitment. No one tells his or her spouse “I love you” exactly once (and remains married, anyway!) and then expects to enjoy 50-plus years of marital bliss without ever uttering those words again. I believe it’s just as important to communicate company values on a regular basis.
At Intertech, we reinforce our values with banners in the office and through frequent discussions and examples of how the values have been demonstrated by various employees. By pointing out employees “living the values,” we reinforce that our values are real and underline how we treat our customers and each other.
We’ve also instituted a program that further involves employees in keeping the values alive. It’s called “You’re the ACE” and it involves employees nominating each other for recognition when one of them observes another putting the ACE values into practice. Our goal was to let our people own the ACE values and look for ways to practice them.
Four times a year we host companywide meetings in which employees who either nominated someone, or were nominated, have the chance to win prizes through drawings. The prizes are inconsequential, such as modest gifts from thinkgeek.com, but the drawings themselves are fun events and they give us yet another chance to reinforce employees living the values.
Running a values-based company takes some fortitude. It’s not all just about colorful banners and employee prize drawings. Management must step up to the plate and operate the company consistently with its stated values; not doing so makes a mockery of the values and invites cynicism from employees and customers.
At Intertech, this has meant providing opportunities for employees to take sabbaticals, earn instant bonuses, participate in extensive training and professional development opportunities, and more.
Why do we do all this? We truly want to attract great people and great people deserve ample opportunity to further develop their expertise. If you’re not looking hard at what you do to attract and retain the best people in your industry, I recommend making this a top management priority.
Sometimes, of course, employees do not respect our company values. In those rare instances, we must have the fortitude to ask them to leave. Not doing so communicates volumes about what management really believes about its values.
At one point, I was in the unfortunate position of dealing with this very situation. The employee in question was a top performer, ranking high on the excellence value, but his attitude and commitment to the company were low. He seemed to believe that his technical excellence insulated him from the expectations we held for other mere mortal employees.
It was a tough thing to do, but in the end we let him go. Within hours of his departure, I began hearing from various employees about how difficult he had been to work with and, in some cases, employees had chosen to work nights and weekends to simply avoid having the “superstar” involved on their projects. Morale increased exponentially when we let values inform the decision.
It all comes down to that old saying, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” Let your employees and customers know what you stand for, and you’ll stand taller and reap greater rewards than you imagined possible.
