Specific Detail, Shared Simply and Clearly

While the foundation for the residential construction projects I was involved with in my teens was on a much smaller scale than the skyscrapers I alluded to earlier, they were no less important to the long term stability of the home. The same holds true for the core values in a business of any size. And although starting simple and detailing exactly why we’ve chosen those values is rarely exciting, especially when we’re the only ones engaged in that process early on (or for years in some cases), it’s just as essential as the strong foundation in the construction world.

In Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, while emphasizing the importance of keeping things simple as one of the core practices for how leaders connect with their teams, John Maxwell quotes Albert Einstein as saying, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it enough.” During a recent session Cindy and I hosted for owners and executives from about twenty organizations we work closely with, a large part of the conversation was focused on how so many organizations list the same words as their core values without clearly differentiating what’s expected in practice - at any level. Thinking back to Enron’s eloquent definitions we looked at early on, the general ideas were clear but there was very little specificity around how those values would be displayed in any particular role.

One key lesson I’ve learned from leading through difficult situations is that when we don’t provide clarity, as quickly as possible, our teams are left to form their own conclusions. And like it or not, those conclusions are usually assumptions based on the limited information they have, through a lens focused solely on their individual scope of work. This is the epitome of the phrase, “you can’t see the picture when you’re in the frame.” Without providing explicit clarity for how they apply to any given team member’s role around even the most brilliantly crafted definition, those team members will be forced to adapt our values to their behaviors on their own. Whether it’s because we don’t feel like we have the time to provide that level of detail, we think we’ve already explained it well enough, or we just don’t have enough familiarity with what’s involved in their daily tasks to do it, failing to share this kind of clarity leaves the door wide open to them coming up with a mismatched definition - if they’re still thinking about those values at all.

Make no mistake, defining our values simply and detailing the behaviors involved in displaying them in each team member’s role will never be easy. It is, however, our responsibility - IF we hope to ever have our core values embedded as deeply within our company as “My Pleasure” is with Chick-fil-A. Even then, we’ll need to become an individual case study of displaying something I’ve suggested a few times to this point: consistency. We’ll pick up there soon!