A Values-Based Culture Attracts Great People

In The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, John Maxwell emphasizes that “growth compounds and accelerates IF we remain intentional about it.” Compounding interest, in growth or in our finances, can work for or against it. If you’re not completely certain this is true, have your banker run some numbers showing what happens to high credit card balance when just making the minimum payment compared to how a retirement plan can grow over time with that same amount added there each month instead. 

The same holds true with how our organizational culture is built around a core set of values, whether those values are the ones we have listed in our handbooks and painted our walls or a wildly different set of values we display for our teams that are contrary to what’s in print. While the folks running one company didn’t set out to openly violate the core values it had been built on, gradual moves away from those values had a compounding impact that resulted in costly turnover. Each organization I detailed where the leaders stood strong by what they valued most, even when a compromise here or there would have made life a lot easier for them in the moment, also saw a compounding impact. Like compounding interest, the direction depends on our actions.

In both What’s KILLING Your Profitability? and Leading With A Clear Purpose, I gave examples detailing how top tier people in any industry do not jump ship just because things get difficult. If anything, challenges bring out the best in them and our team as a whole - as long as expectations are high, everyone is held to the same level of accountability, and we uphold our clearly stated core values at all cost. Failing to do these things may not immediately result in everyone leaving at once, but you can bet the team members who strive for excellence won’t be around long. And there’s a chance that an organization without a foundation built on strong core values can attract a rockstar occasionally; even a broken clock is right twice a day. (You won’t get that reference if you’ve only ever used digital clocks…) The good news is that not only will consistently working to solidify our foundation around core values bring out the best in the amazing team members we have, it will - sooner or later - yield a culture that even great people outside our organization hear about and WANT to be a part of. The best people I’ve ever been around have had one thing in common: they want to be part of a winning team. In fact, I’ve met very few who don’t. Before mapping out a simple yet specific framework for building your foundation around a clear set of core values, we’ll look at what we absolutely must do as leaders to ensure that compounding effect is working for us rather than against us.