The Problem With Your Core Values That You May Not Know

Well, hello again, and welcome back to the confidence covered by humility podcast.

I'm your host, James Mayhew, and we're going to be doing

something a little different today.

Like as the creator of the podcast, I get to make some creative decisions

from time to time, I suppose.

And, and this is one of those I have for a long time, wanted to just produce

a more frequent amount of content.

On the podcast, uh, to the point where I'd like to go daily with it,

but I'd really like to kind of focus on short form content and short

form I think is easy to digest.

It's easy to consume.

You can do it while you're brushing your teeth, et cetera.

This might be just a little outside of the, the shortest of the short

form that I'll do, which is, you know, maybe a couple of minutes at a time.

This one might end up being three or four, but anyway, I wanted to just

do that and create this new audio experience as part of this podcast for

you, uh, in a sense to, to help me also, um, share some of this great stuff.

So there are times when I post on LinkedIn where.

Visibility is just low for whatever reason.

It just doesn't get served up.

It could be wrong time of day or subject matter that LinkedIn just, I don't know,

either feels as redundant or whatever.

Who, who knows?

So there's these posts that I'm putting out there that, um, actually

are some really good content in my opinion that don't really get seen.

And so since anything with social media has a somewhat of a shelf life to it,

uh, you know, after two or three days, no one's going to see it for the most

part again, but that's not the same with.

Audio content or media like on YouTube or here on in the podcast format.

So that's, that's my reasoning for doing this is that, uh, it's just another

way to get this content out there.

So this is actually a true story here from this.

I wasn't ready for his question.

Cody, our shipping and receiving manager walked into my office.

Got a second.

Yeah, sure.

Come on in.

What's up?

I don't know how to inspire my guys to think big.

You know what we do.

My team packs boxes.

How am I supposed to hold the guys accountable to that?

Now, think big and make it happen was one of our company's six core values.

Cody helped me see something that I knew existed, but

struggled to put my finger on.

There was nothing wrong with the core value.

It's a good core value.

It's an awesome core value, but there's also nothing wrong

with Cody's question about.

I don't know how to use this with my team.

In fact, I think it was a great question because it highlighted this important

gap our company had with our core values.

And it might be the same type of gap that your company has around your core

values, which is how do you make them actionable and impactful, and impactful

for every person in the company, not just some of them, but every person.

Now, working in Cody's department, it was like running a sprint every day.

Each morning they had started behind as web owners, you

know, where they come in 24 7.

So their job was to clear them by the end of the business day.

And it was way more involved than just picking and packing.

Often they would have to consult with a sales team member to ensure that

the right things were being sent.

I mean, there was questions.

This wasn't just go grab the widget.

There was other details to this.

Now, Mondays they became the hardest or they were typically the hardest because,

you know, with a web based company, you're getting orders in over the weekend

and we weren't open on the weekends.

So Monday mornings, um, all these things would come in and

they'd start their day basically behind and play catch up all day.

So that left very little time throughout the week for any of

them, including Cody, the manager.

To think about how do we make bigger changes here, let alone make them

happen during this daily sprint.

I said, Cody, that's an excellent question.

Tell me more about what you're thinking.

And he went on to explain that their goal was to be 100% accurate.

That was a huge goal, huge metrics for their metric for their department.

Speed was something, however, that they excelled at.

So speed wasn't, uh, those guys were just loving their speed.

They worked very, very fast.

But even though their accuracy was hovering around 98%, that meant that

two customers out of every hundred customers were going to have an issue.

Now, we walked through the shipping area, we looked at workstations,

and we talked with his team.

And we didn't end up finding any kind of silver bullet solution

because honestly those don't exist.

But we did find dozens of small inefficiencies which led to us being able

to identify improvements the team could make to hit the goal of 100% accuracy.

Now, think big and make it happen is a great core value, like I said, but

it has to be broken into tangible, actionable, and even accountable steps.

The mistake that I made was not understanding this.

I was the guy that led the charge to write those core values.

Now, because Cody was willing to ask for help and say, I don't know how to do this.

He helped me learn a very valuable lesson.

And it's something that I work with clients now today on.

See, when I work with clients now on their core values, I use

a story like Cody's example here.

I use these to illustrate the necessity for making core values

visible, measurable, and teachable.

Now, take a moment and look at your company, your company's

processes around your core values.

Think about that.

What you find, or more importantly, what you won't find or don't

find is a great place to start.

Core values that are just words on the wall won't increase engagement.

Don't miss that.

In fact, they actually drive it down.

But if you have good leaders like Cody who'd like to take ownership, they'll

ensure that that doesn't happen.

So the question I would have for you is, is there someone willing to lead

that initiative in your company?

Do you have somebody that is available to help work on those things?

Now, if not, that's okay.

Because there are people like me that can.

And so if you want to learn more about how you can take your core values to the next

level and beyond about application, around accountability, how do we teach them?

How do we even give feedback around them?

How do we even measure?

Eva or evaluate an, uh, an employee's experience, their, their performance

around them, it can be done.

So this is, again, short form content for the day.

I want to thank you for listening, tuning in.

Let me know your thoughts, uh, leave a comment.

So that helps me on the podcast.

Also, that helps other people who would benefit from having content like this

and learning about experiences like Cody.

Every time that you like it, leave a comment, rate it, uh, that

really helps us get the word out.

So, So when people ask me, James, what do you do to help a company?

I've been basically able to boil it down to this.

I ensure that you have amazing people who are doing and producing exceptional

work on the most important things.

I look forward to seeing you again on the next episode.