How to Set a Company’s Core Values
“Be authentic” isn’t enough
Jessica Powell, the former Google vice president who wrote The Big Disruption and told you how to quit your job, is here to answer your common but tricky work questions. Check back every other week for more management advice with a tech inflection.
When my co-founder and I first started our company, we never talked about things like “values.” It was just a small group of us, we had a clear problem we were trying to solve, and we all knew each other. Now we’ve grown larger, and I think we need to find a way for new employees to understand what we care about. What’s the best way to do that?
Whether you’re just forming your company or are already a few years in, articulating your company values is a good exercise to undertake.
You may be thinking, “Okay, our value is to make as much money as possible.”
Kudos to you for your clarity and focus!
But you might want to expand on that just a bit. The thing is we spend most of our day at work, and most people are not making millions of dollars at their jobs. So, if you want a motivated workforce, you probably need to look beyond just monetary reward. Similarly, it’s hard to keep people motivated for the long term with just a technical or business problem to solve…
