Do You Care About Your Company's Values?
When's the last time you thought about your company's values? I mean really thought about them, not just glanced at the poster in the break room. If you're like most folks, it's probably been a minute. Company values aren't just some fluffy HR thing. They're the guardrails that keep your organization on track. When companies start making decisions that don't align with their stated values, that's when things can go sideways real quick.
Take Boeing for example. They sacrificed their core value of engineering excellence in pursuit of profits, and we all know how that turned out. Or look at Starbucks - they've drifted from being everyone's favorite "third place" to just another overpriced coffee shop. Death by a thousand tiny decisions that prioritized revenue over their original mission.
The scary part is how easy it is for this to happen. It's rarely one big dramatic moment where a CEO says "Values be damned, we're going full evil!" Nope, it's a bunch of small choices that seem harmless at the time, but add up to something harmful.
When companies lose sight of their values, they lose the trust of their people. According to the Edelman Trust Index, 59% of Americans don't believe business leaders tell the truth. That lack of trust bleeds into everything, including how people view new tech like AI. Only 30% of Americans trust AI right now, largely because they see it as a job-killer.
To fix this we need leaders who aren't afraid to have real talk about the impact of tech and other big changes. People are hungry for transparent, authentic leaders. But more than that, we need companies to actually live their values, not just pay lip service to them.
Profit shouldn't be the end goal - it should be the result of pursuing a meaningful mission. Microsoft wants to boost productivity. Gucci aims to provide luxury experiences that help people find themselves. Colgate is all about building a healthier world for people, pets, and the planet. Sure, these might sound a little cheesy, but they give these companies a North Star to navigate by.
Without clear values, you end up with a workplace full of incivility and mistrust. According to SHRM, 38% of US workers feel their workplace is uncivil, and 58% think it's gotten way worse in the last couple years.
In the daily grind of hitting targets and putting out fires, it's easy to lose sight of the big picture stuff. But if we want our companies to have any shot at long-term success (and not turn into soulless profit machines), we've got to keep those values front and center. So I'll ask again - do you care about your company's values? If the answer is yes, what are you doing to live them out every day? And if the answer is no... well, maybe it's time to start.
