How to define the ideal Values and Behaviours for your org?

“The culture you have in your organisation is the sum of all the wanted behaviours that you celebrate minus all the unwanted behaviours that you tolerate.” Danny Meyer - Founder, Shake Shack

Values + Behaviours = Your Company’s Operating System

If the company is like a family, these are the sanskaar of the family. If all the members exhibit the important desired tenets, the family prospers together. And as the family grows in number, the new members automatically imbibe the same values.

A common mistake founders make is assuming others are exactly like them and have the same motivations. Since that’s not the case, consciously having a strong value system helps align everyone and make the right decisions, consistently at all levels.

Here culture means:

• A conducive environment for your team to function at its peak

• The right mindset and habits required to succeed in your business, eg. customer obsession, data-first, innovation, process-based

Sharing our thoughts on how you can think about defining the Values and Behaviours for your startup:

Values:

What we prioritise

• Derived from the business requirements, instead of generic terms like "honesty" and "teamwork". Eg. Be a Host (Airbnb), Pride in operational excellence (Amazon), Trip obsessed (Uber)

• Must be invoked while taking fundamental decisions, and in case of dilemmas, values should help and inspire the team, and yourself, to take the right decision

• Something that if everyone in the company imbibes, you can be sure that 80% of the decisions will be in the right direction for the business

• Must always be applicable and not change with context

• Must be objective

• Max 4-5 in number, otherwise people won’t remember them and they lose their impact

Behaviours:

How we operate

• These are personal behaviours and habits that you want to promote within the company. Eg. Disagree but commit, Speak up but empathetically, Measure everything, etc.

• While you might want a lot of good behaviours, include only the absolute essential, which are a must for anyone to succeed at your org. Otherwise this list will lose it's meaning

• Max 10-15 in number

Now it’s a waste if these only exist on a wall / document! Sharing some suggestions on how you can drive these across the organisation.

How to drive Values and Behaviours across the org:

• Continuously reiterate them in All Hands, important meetings and mails

• These must be a part of your Performance Feedback process, which consequently impacts the salary increment. Peers must rate each other on these values and behaviours. That will incentivise people to live them on a daily basis

• For new joiners, during the onboarding process, explain in detail (and not casually) and stress how important it is to follow these to succeed at your company

• And obviously, you must live them yourself - lead by example :)

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We hope this helps you come up with the core Values and Behaviours that work for your startup - to build a good environment and also to achieve the desired business outcomes. We would love to know your experience with implementing values and behaviours - successful or otherwise. We understand it's very difficult to come up with the right set of values and hence are happy to assist if you are in the process of building your org manifesto. You can check out how we can help you and contact us.