There's an interesting point here. How do companies record their precedents? Where do organizations record the decisions they took and why? Seems like it would have many benefits beyond corporate branding. Ray Dalio recommends a similar practice in investment; obsessively recording his decisions and the rationale behind them to feedback and improve strategy.
I may be making this up, but I seem to remember there being a brief period where a handful of people tried to built products around an idea like this. They were sort of data-adjacent, where the goal was to track decisions that people made, explain why they made them, and whatnot. They clearly didn't go anywhere (or I made it up), though it always seemed like the sort of thing you'd never want to write down, but would always wish you had.
As far as the company values - I was thinking about the military and creeds. Like the Navy SEALs creed for example. “...I lead by example in all situations. I will never quit. I persevere and thrive on adversity. My Nation expects me to be physically harder and mentally stronger than my enemies...” Not very light and fluffy. Also - I kind of like the idea of a creed as most creeds talk about values like perseverance, but the creed seems to better apply it in the context of the organization - in this case the SEALs. I also think you can have a successful organization where people bring all sorts of diverse values and motives - you just need to agree on a mission and the values that must be shared to carry out that mission successfully (and accomplish it the right way as far as morals / ethics / legality etc.)
Yeah, I don't mind the creed thing, though I think those sorts of things are more emblematic of a culture than prescriptive. Honor, we don't quit, toughness, etc - that sort of thing feels like it's about describing a character. Which I think is fine, if everyone mostly agrees about what that character is. And I don't actually know if that can be possible without precedents? Like, military creeds probably work in part because we all have some sense of what "military" means. We can interpolate a lot in between those words, not because the words are that good, but because the organization is old. For companies that don't have any of that foundation, it's much harder to know what something like "honer" might mean. (That, and startups try to be fluffy and inoffensive, or at least *positive,* which I think hides a lot about not only what the culture is, but what people want the culture to be.)
Well and to your point - maybe it’s best for the creed / values / etc. to develop over time. And for startups keeping things simple at the beginning is better - and focusing more on the purpose of the company - which if it’s a for profit company is very simple. To make money. Or if you want to go with Peter Drucker’s definition - The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. I know of a few situations where I think working on company values and culture encouraged way too much inward company focus that distracted from the purpose.
I have some note somewhere about how startups should stop pretending that they have some divine mission to like, finally make it easy to find a new dentist, and just say the whole point of this is to make money. Just be a hedge fund, with a different product.
I was telling someone recently that if I were to do this again, I think the motto would be "make something great that makes lots of money." So I'm into this one.
This reminded me of a question you can ask an interviewer during the interviews that gets at the idea of precedents: "Can you describe a situation where the company's values were challenged, and how was it handled?" or an even more direct "Have there been instances where the company's actions contradicted its stated values? How were these conflicts resolved?"
But at the same time I'm sure you can expect a somewhat soft response.
Or you get a kind of grandstanding about some righteous decision that the company made, like "We had this great engineer but they were a jerk and so we fired them, look at us." Which, great, yes, fire the engineer. It's all kind of salesy.
Like, if companies were restaurants, you could think of values as an advertising pitch that says how great the food is, or as a menu that factually explains what the restaurant serves. I think most companies treat it more like former, where values are dressed up and pretty agreeable, and they should treat it like the latter, where values are just facts that people should know before they eat there.
I like that analogy but having these "interpretable" values is part of the value here. Then the company can interpret them however they want given the circumstances. I do like the angle of having a value that others would disagree with. Something like Facebook's "Move fast and break things" - you can see how that would appealing to some people but not others. And that makes it a better value than "joy" or "love customers."
My favorite example is Amazon's "customer obsession" - how much of their product decisions now are more about competition and maximizing revenue, hmm.
Oh, yeah, cynically, I think for companies want to thread that needle, where they write something that sounds specific and concrete, but is actually pretty fluid. "Customer obsession" is probably a pretty good example of that, honestly. On one hand, you can frame that as a very unique and differentiated directive ("we will do this tiny thing in our checkout flow that nobody else has thought of because we are customer obsessed TM") but you can also use it to justify almost anything ("i know you don't want us to time your bathroom breaks in the warehouse but we have to because that's what it takes to be customer obsessed TM")
Call me a cynic, but I see corporate values as much more of a marketing exercise than something more genuine. Since 20 or so years ago, the idea that we should “follow our passion” and find meaning in work has taken hold. As a result, all sorts of companies have shifted their pitch to prospective hires, not just startups trying to codify their initial cultural vibe.
For me, values are first and foremost for advertising jobs and keeping current employees engaged. That doesn’t mean they’re never genuine, but as you observe they’re rarely a formal set of principles that a business is run with. Perhaps a bit like folks going to church, sort of believe, but also compromise their beliefs where it is sufficiently expedient to do so?
I think that's half true? Like, I think the intent is often real - Stripe, or Airbnb, or Figma really do want people who operate in a particular way, and really do value different attributes than, say, Accenture or Nationwide. But:
1. There aren't really any differences between Stripe or Airbnb or Figma or any other "Silicon Valley"-type company;
2. A lot of values are marketing within that group, so it's about who can write the most compelling turn of phrase about how they value "self-starters" or whatever.
In other words, I think I see values are a reflection of which major personality type you are - startup that moves fast and breaks things; rule follower chain of command operator company; safe and bland faceless corporation; probably a few others - and then all the language around them are marketing differentiation. So it's real, in the way that a coffee shop is different than a pizza place, but not real in that the coffee shop or pizza place advertising the particular flavor notes of their house blends (of coffees and cheeses) is all kinda made up.
We make you close your eyes and tell us what flavor sour patch kid you're eating so we can build data visualizations that meticulously track your taste bud performance vs your colleagues--because we like to have fun.
precedents are awesome - and ideally they lay out a trade off you can say with your chest - some random notes i jotted down about values when we started:
### **having a sense of urgency**
- constantly asking "how can we achieve the same outcome with less work"
- prioritizing getting it right over getting it scalable
*tradeoff: when we build something for the first time - we expect duct tape on it. we acknowledge the debt we take on*
### **having drive & aggression**
- winning does matter, and you're always striving for more
- always push for the extra mile, always looking at the next highest peak
*tradeoff: we acknowledge it might cause someone to inflate their achievements, and it comes at the cost of comfort*
Yeah, like, I think that the tradeoffs here are the only things that really matter. Every startup says have a sense of urgency; a drive to win; work smart, not hard; etc; etc; etc. But what's interesting - and what nobody shares - is how they really want you put that into practice. Should we ship something faster that we know will be kind of shoddy and have to be rebuilt? Will my boss's aggression sometimes cause them to yell at me in the office? Should I yell back? That's what people want to know, but everyone seems sort of afraid to answer it straight up. (Or, they work somewhere where bosses sometimes yell, and then say that's ok because it's coming from a passion to win, but they don't want to tell people that this is the sort of place where people sometimes yell. Which, I think companies should say! Because some people want to work at a place like that!)
There's an interesting point here. How do companies record their precedents? Where do organizations record the decisions they took and why? Seems like it would have many benefits beyond corporate branding. Ray Dalio recommends a similar practice in investment; obsessively recording his decisions and the rationale behind them to feedback and improve strategy.
I may be making this up, but I seem to remember there being a brief period where a handful of people tried to built products around an idea like this. They were sort of data-adjacent, where the goal was to track decisions that people made, explain why they made them, and whatnot. They clearly didn't go anywhere (or I made it up), though it always seemed like the sort of thing you'd never want to write down, but would always wish you had.
As far as the company values - I was thinking about the military and creeds. Like the Navy SEALs creed for example. “...I lead by example in all situations. I will never quit. I persevere and thrive on adversity. My Nation expects me to be physically harder and mentally stronger than my enemies...” Not very light and fluffy. Also - I kind of like the idea of a creed as most creeds talk about values like perseverance, but the creed seems to better apply it in the context of the organization - in this case the SEALs. I also think you can have a successful organization where people bring all sorts of diverse values and motives - you just need to agree on a mission and the values that must be shared to carry out that mission successfully (and accomplish it the right way as far as morals / ethics / legality etc.)
Yeah, I don't mind the creed thing, though I think those sorts of things are more emblematic of a culture than prescriptive. Honor, we don't quit, toughness, etc - that sort of thing feels like it's about describing a character. Which I think is fine, if everyone mostly agrees about what that character is. And I don't actually know if that can be possible without precedents? Like, military creeds probably work in part because we all have some sense of what "military" means. We can interpolate a lot in between those words, not because the words are that good, but because the organization is old. For companies that don't have any of that foundation, it's much harder to know what something like "honer" might mean. (That, and startups try to be fluffy and inoffensive, or at least *positive,* which I think hides a lot about not only what the culture is, but what people want the culture to be.)
Well and to your point - maybe it’s best for the creed / values / etc. to develop over time. And for startups keeping things simple at the beginning is better - and focusing more on the purpose of the company - which if it’s a for profit company is very simple. To make money. Or if you want to go with Peter Drucker’s definition - The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. I know of a few situations where I think working on company values and culture encouraged way too much inward company focus that distracted from the purpose.
I have some note somewhere about how startups should stop pretending that they have some divine mission to like, finally make it easy to find a new dentist, and just say the whole point of this is to make money. Just be a hedge fund, with a different product.
The (private) company I work for has a mission along these lines, “Make money and having fun doing so” I like the straightforward nature of it.
I was telling someone recently that if I were to do this again, I think the motto would be "make something great that makes lots of money." So I'm into this one.
This reminded me of a question you can ask an interviewer during the interviews that gets at the idea of precedents: "Can you describe a situation where the company's values were challenged, and how was it handled?" or an even more direct "Have there been instances where the company's actions contradicted its stated values? How were these conflicts resolved?"
But at the same time I'm sure you can expect a somewhat soft response.
Or you get a kind of grandstanding about some righteous decision that the company made, like "We had this great engineer but they were a jerk and so we fired them, look at us." Which, great, yes, fire the engineer. It's all kind of salesy.
Like, if companies were restaurants, you could think of values as an advertising pitch that says how great the food is, or as a menu that factually explains what the restaurant serves. I think most companies treat it more like former, where values are dressed up and pretty agreeable, and they should treat it like the latter, where values are just facts that people should know before they eat there.
I like that analogy but having these "interpretable" values is part of the value here. Then the company can interpret them however they want given the circumstances. I do like the angle of having a value that others would disagree with. Something like Facebook's "Move fast and break things" - you can see how that would appealing to some people but not others. And that makes it a better value than "joy" or "love customers."
My favorite example is Amazon's "customer obsession" - how much of their product decisions now are more about competition and maximizing revenue, hmm.
Oh, yeah, cynically, I think for companies want to thread that needle, where they write something that sounds specific and concrete, but is actually pretty fluid. "Customer obsession" is probably a pretty good example of that, honestly. On one hand, you can frame that as a very unique and differentiated directive ("we will do this tiny thing in our checkout flow that nobody else has thought of because we are customer obsessed TM") but you can also use it to justify almost anything ("i know you don't want us to time your bathroom breaks in the warehouse but we have to because that's what it takes to be customer obsessed TM")
Call me a cynic, but I see corporate values as much more of a marketing exercise than something more genuine. Since 20 or so years ago, the idea that we should “follow our passion” and find meaning in work has taken hold. As a result, all sorts of companies have shifted their pitch to prospective hires, not just startups trying to codify their initial cultural vibe.
For me, values are first and foremost for advertising jobs and keeping current employees engaged. That doesn’t mean they’re never genuine, but as you observe they’re rarely a formal set of principles that a business is run with. Perhaps a bit like folks going to church, sort of believe, but also compromise their beliefs where it is sufficiently expedient to do so?
I think that's half true? Like, I think the intent is often real - Stripe, or Airbnb, or Figma really do want people who operate in a particular way, and really do value different attributes than, say, Accenture or Nationwide. But:
1. There aren't really any differences between Stripe or Airbnb or Figma or any other "Silicon Valley"-type company;
2. A lot of values are marketing within that group, so it's about who can write the most compelling turn of phrase about how they value "self-starters" or whatever.
In other words, I think I see values are a reflection of which major personality type you are - startup that moves fast and breaks things; rule follower chain of command operator company; safe and bland faceless corporation; probably a few others - and then all the language around them are marketing differentiation. So it's real, in the way that a coffee shop is different than a pizza place, but not real in that the coffee shop or pizza place advertising the particular flavor notes of their house blends (of coffees and cheeses) is all kinda made up.
> Instead of posting and advertising their values, I think we’d all be better served if companies shared precedents.
Tell me about a time when ...
They irony here is my personal precedent on this, when I had the chance to write precedents or values, was to write values. Next time, I guess.
We make you close your eyes and tell us what flavor sour patch kid you're eating so we can build data visualizations that meticulously track your taste bud performance vs your colleagues--because we like to have fun.
Fun for the super tasters maybe
precedents are awesome - and ideally they lay out a trade off you can say with your chest - some random notes i jotted down about values when we started:
### **having a sense of urgency**
- constantly asking "how can we achieve the same outcome with less work"
- prioritizing getting it right over getting it scalable
*tradeoff: when we build something for the first time - we expect duct tape on it. we acknowledge the debt we take on*
### **having drive & aggression**
- winning does matter, and you're always striving for more
- always push for the extra mile, always looking at the next highest peak
*tradeoff: we acknowledge it might cause someone to inflate their achievements, and it comes at the cost of comfort*
Yeah, like, I think that the tradeoffs here are the only things that really matter. Every startup says have a sense of urgency; a drive to win; work smart, not hard; etc; etc; etc. But what's interesting - and what nobody shares - is how they really want you put that into practice. Should we ship something faster that we know will be kind of shoddy and have to be rebuilt? Will my boss's aggression sometimes cause them to yell at me in the office? Should I yell back? That's what people want to know, but everyone seems sort of afraid to answer it straight up. (Or, they work somewhere where bosses sometimes yell, and then say that's ok because it's coming from a passion to win, but they don't want to tell people that this is the sort of place where people sometimes yell. Which, I think companies should say! Because some people want to work at a place like that!)
Footnote 3 made me laugh so hard I choked on my coffee.
Coffee, a hell of drug. (And glad you liked it!)