Culture and values may not need to be as clearly defined in a small organization where every employee interacts directly with the owner, founder or senior management.  But, in an organization that’s mid-sized and growing (or larger), defining culture and values helps frame decision making at every level and gets employees “bought-in” to the company philosophies and vision.

Having core values and communicating those values well throughout the organization, however, are two completely different undertakings.

Let’s take Starbucks, for example.  Howard Schultz, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, has publicly admitted the company strayed from its original founding values during its pursuit to achieve high growth.  He’s quoted saying, “Outsiders failed to appreciate the nuances of invigorating a service-based business, especially a brand as emotionally charged as ours.  Starbucks is not a coffee company that serves people.  It is a people company that serves coffee, and human behavior is much more challenging to change than any muffin recipe or marketing strategy.”  Communication about values had been lost company-wide, and it was having an impact on the brand and consumer experience.

Jack Welch famously said his key to success as CEO of GE was to pick a single message and repeat it ad infinitum throughout the company.  He understood the power of repetition when it comes to sharing core values, vision and getting employee buy-in.

It wasn’t until 2010 that we took the time to formally write down our company values and started intentionally sharing them repeatedly.  Disseminating the values company-wide has brought a new level of cohesion to our team.  While we’ve always had a unique and attractive company culture, employees weren’t able to identify exactly which philosophies drove that culture or perpetuate them in their own departments.  Now, our core values act as a framework for decision making across the organization.

We’re pretty fond of our culture and core values—they’re uniquely ours and are much more than just empty words.  In fact, they’ve become an internal nomenclature used in daily conversation.

Our core values:

• Search For Alignment
• Crush Mediocrity
• Drive and Embrace Change
• Create and Measure Results
• Know & Improve Yourself
• Making Everyone Around You Better Makes You Better (Neighborhood Watch)
• Performance = Enjoyment
• Better Questions Lead to Better Answers
• Healthy and Respectful Debate Leads to Prompt and Sound Solutions