Is our team really living its values?

Hayden: Hello hello hello! Welcome to another MARKHAM’s episode! I’m Hayden Prestidge – I head up the Design and Delivery team for MARKHAM, based in Napier, New Zealand. Beautiful Hawke’s Bay, mostly sunny, red wine, right on the coast. So, pleased to be here today, and it’s great to have you listening!

Like most businesses, MARKHAM has clearly defined values – you know, a set of values that we live by and breathe by, which is really summed up in the acronym, BE SURE! But we’d like to have a closer look at that and really look at values in value, personal values, but business values and challenge – Is Our Team Really Living its Values? So we’ve brought on Mike Clark today. He’s an expert facilitator and comes from ThinkRight, Palmerston North, his own business. Mike’s a very dynamic, strategic facilitator, brilliant trainer and motivational speaker.

So, welcome, Mike, good to have you onboard, tell us a bit about yourself and your background.

Mike: Marvellous, thanks so much, Hayden. Me, I emigrated from Zimbabwe in 2004; and I saw a lovely quote by Mark Twain once, it said, “Find a job you enjoy, and you’ll never work a day in your life” and I thought, Crumbs! I’d done production, management, sales, marketing, also telemarketing, all sorts of different things, but what do I enjoy that much? I discovered I love training, and so I’ve spent the last decade plus, doing this, and helping people, and that is what gives me my buzz!

Hayden: Fantastic: I love that, absolutely, and I’m totally on board with that. You’ve got to enjoy what you do and really that is part of your values. If you’re not enjoying that, what’s the point in having values for a start?

But Invisible Strength is the topic of these episodes, and values do have an invisible strength, don’t they? And I was a bit challenged by a recent post you put out, challenging us, you know, Are your teams values just an expensive wallpaper? And I thought, that’s a good question, can you share with us some thoughts on that?

Mike: Absolutely! So values really came to the fore after Jim Collins wrote his book, “Good to Great” and he went and analysed companies that he had defined as great, had some strict criteria on what made you a great company, and he revealed that companies that were great had this consistent theme, that they had Values!

And what I saw happen was, after the book, there was this massive proliferation where all companies were like, Oh yay, we’ve discovered the silver bullet, and we just need to snap up some values up on the wall and they’re all done and dusted. We’re going to be a great company!

And that’s where my comment came from, is that people go and invest a huge amount of money often with some consultant, they go print these glossy bits of paper. And then I’d go in to work with the team, and I’d go, What are your values? And they’d look at me and they’d go, “Oh yes, we’ve got some of those and they’re on the back of the toilet door!” or wherever it was that they were in.

And so they knew where the picture was, but not what they were. So they weren’t living it, and therefore that’s why I call it expensive wallpaper.

Hayden: Yes totally, totally. I mean, we’ve probably all been there, we’ve sat down in a boardroom and come up with these things. You know, we want to be there –

But how do we really make them stick? How do we make the values that we come up with stick, or have enough buy-in to be part of them? How do you see that?

Mike: So for me the companies that I work with who I’ve seen do this well – they are very clear on their values; so that the business owners come up with the values and they go, This is what is important to us. We are not going to negotiate on this. These are a must-live-by. And they are the core values, our three to five core values that they live by.

And then when they employ people, they actually say to him at the employment stage, these are our three to five core values. If you do not align with that, please do not join us because every meeting we have, we will talk about the core values. When you have your one-on-one reviews, we will talk about the core values. If you happen to get disciplined, you will be disciplined in line with the core values. And so you live, eat and breathe them.

So before you hire someone, you tell them what it is. Once you’ve hired them, you then live your values. So when you have a meeting, I often say to people if you do a stand-up toolbox meeting, a great way of doing it is to catch people living the values. So I might go, Hey, I just wanted to shout out for Hayden, you know I saw Hayden… and then mention a value that they saw you living.

And so, One, I’ve got to know what the values are; Two, I’m going to know what they look like; and Three, I’m catching team members living it, and loving it myself.

And so I found that that’s what makes them stick, is when people know them, understand what they look like, and they live them.

Hayden: Yes, I love that; and understand the actions that make that, you know, depict that value, right, and rewarding on those actions. You know, I’m going to reward you because of, This letter E is “Enjoy your role”. I can see you’ve done well, and good on you! And then make that public to the rest of the team. I love that.

And I love what you said about bringing them into every meeting, every review, might be performance reviews, might be the start of a sales meeting. You know, here are our values, this is how we proceed. How are we going, against these? And we can almost have … I mean, you’ve got to have your company values. We can almost have your team values within that, can’t you? You know, your sales team … like, you know, I’m thinking about Navy SEALs, “Never leave a man behind”. Those sort of things … you can almost create that in your own circle as well.

Is there anything that you’ve seen in all your time that defines a good set of values? What have you seen in that sector?

Mike: So for me, the book that really helped give me absolute clarity on this was a book called “The Advantage” by Patrick Lencioni. And he said that when he went into companies, much like myself, he saw these values everywhere, and what he realised is that there were three layers of values.

And what happens is, people get mixed up with them. He said there are the Core values. They are non-negotiable. If somebody breaks one of those, you know, they would leave the team. Or, you know, if there was a big contract, but in order to get it, you had to compromise one of your values, you just wouldn’t do it. So those are called the non-negotiable; and everybody knows them, lives them, breathes them.

Then he had what he called Aspirational values. So these are values which we really aspire to. We really wants to get to them, but we’re not quite there yet. So they’re still important to us, but we’re not as good as we want to be in that.

So if I was to come along and work alongside you, there’ll be Core values that you live, and whether I look at you at home or at work, you would be doing that. And then there’s other stuff which is important to you, but you’re not quite there yet. You go, This matters, but I’m not that standard yet, I’m not there yet, but it’s still important.

And then there’s what he called the Rights to Play values.

So you know, if you join an accounting firm and they went right, our Core values are accuracy and honesty – you’re going to go, Duh, you’re an accountant?! You’ve kind of got to have those if you want to be in accountancy.

For me, one of the things that it’s vitally important is being clear on what is a Right to Play value. In other words, you need to kind of have that, if you wanted to be on this team. The Aspirational values like, this is really important to us, but we don’t do it all the time, but we wish we did; and the Core values, which is absolutely, categorically non-negotiable, and that has to happen all the time.

So for us, we’ve got our four core values and, you know, the top one is Trust. You know, clients trust us incredibly with information. And we trust them to take action – because we’ve got a triple guarantee on all the work we do. And so we’ve really clearly defined what that looks like, what the actions are that people are displaying when they do that, and that is a categorical non-negotiable.

And so that, when we sort of looked at it from that angle, and being very clear on what is a Core value, what is an Aspirational value, what is a Right to Play value, I’ve found that that’s really helped teams to go, Ah – great! and actually start to separate them and go, This is not negotiable, that we’re striving for, that’s a given.

Hayden: Yes, that’s brilliant and they’re really like your founding principles probably. You know, you’ve lived and breathed them from day one. And that’s what built your business, and that’s what you sticking by. That is really good. I mean, to be able to, like we were saying earlier, to be able to hire and fire on those principles, that’s what really means it’s a good true value, isn’t it?

Mike: Absolutely.

Hayden: And it’s driving the business. I appreciate that.

And so if we have got values in place if maybe the listeners have got some values in place, how can you help to maybe analyse if they’re still right, and reassess, and maybe refine? What are some good thoughts around that? What are some good processes?

Mike: So, one of the key things is to ask your team, Do they know what the Values are? And so if the team knows about it, there’s a good chance you’re living it. And then you can check with the team, Are we living the values? So, do you know what the values are? Are we living them? And do you see anything else as a team that you believe we value more than what our stated values are?

And quite often that’s quite challenging for people because they go, Well, this is obviously more important to you than that – and you can sit down and go Well, why do you say that? Is that true? Is that valid? And maybe we’ve gone slightly off course. We need to come back on course, or maybe we need to change that.

But you made a comment beforehand, when you found the business, in essence, the business owners, the founders are normally very clear on your values and your values don’t tend to change as you go through. What I find is actually more important, once you’re clear on your values, is to then be clear on what it looks like inside your business.

And I think the All Blacks do this incredibly well. They’ve got what they call their 15 principles, you know. So they talk about, you know, Sweep the Shed. So one of their core values is Humility. And what does that look like? And they got very clear on that, they call it Sweep the Shed. You know, when they asked Steve Hansen, What do you mean by sweep the shed? He goes, You know, no one is too big and too important to sweep the shed.

And so at the end of an international game of rugby, you know, I often say to people, What do you think the changing room looks like? And people go, Oh, it will be a mess! And they go, yes there will be, but not for the All Blacks because no one cleans up after an All Black. And so they leave their rooms clean, whether you’re the captain or whether you’re the guy running the oranges out: everybody cleans up. And so that is what the value looks like. Getting clear on that is really helpful for people.

Hayden: Yes, and the leaders of the group being able to share what that looks like within it. I mean, it doesn’t have to come from the owners down, does it?

Mike: No.

Hayden: You know, people taking responsibility, and sharing and talking about the values, within those meetings and into the team meetings, those sort of things. That’s fantastic.

I appreciate your input into this topic, it’s good, it’s a really good topic, you know, are we really living our values?

So I guess a lot of people listening now will probably be wondering how to reach out to you? You’ve got a lot more content that we can source, and resources that we can lever off! So what are some good ways they can reach out to get in touch with you, Mike?

Mike: Fabulous, thank you! So email me, [email protected] or our website thinkright.co.nz, either of those will be great, and we’ll be back in touch if anyone’s got any questions or queries.

Hayden: Great, yes fantastic. Otherwise, if you know any contacts at MARKHAM come back to us, we will point you there as well.

But no, I love the topic, about Values, are we living them? And really, it’s about growth; it’s about personal growth; it’s about fuelling what we need to move forward.

And I really thank you all for coming on board, all our listeners. Love to welcome any feedback, as always, for Mike or myself or MARKHAM, any topic.

Mike, have you got anything before we wrap up?

Mike: I think the last thing is, that if your teams are living your values, you’ll know it because they’ll start to hold each other to account. You’ll hear the language in the team going, Hey, we don’t do stuff like that around here! And that’s when you know your team’s actually living your values.

So listen to what’s happening around you and your business, and when people are using your values to hold each other to account, hold each other aligned, then you know you’ve got it right and you’ve absolutely nailed it.

Hayden: Yes, fantastic. I was actually reviewing an email for one of my team a bit earlier and I noticed they put some words in there that we use in our values about Solutions Focussed and Unified Team, and this was in – it wasn’t a pitch, as such, but it was in a proposal. And I thought, That’s brilliant; they’re actually taking on, you know, our approach. So I appreciate that, good thoughts.

So thanks all for coming on! We’re keen to take suggestions or extra topics that might come up – might be performance topics, might be topics about design, and the concrete industry or concrete pain points, durability, those sort of things.

But in the meantime, have a great day, great evening, whatever time you’re listening to this and we’ll catch up on the next one! Thank you! Thank you, Mike!

Mike: Thanks a lot!