Cameron Herold fired a vice president at College Pro Painters for disrespecting a female employee, violating the company's core values. Most leaders can't even recite their own values, he says. Core values are fake unless you're willing to fire people over them.
Chapters
I remember in 1993, I was sitting at the head office of College Pro Painters, and one of the vice presidents made a very disrespectful remark to one of the women in our office. And I called him on it and I was like, Kevin, respect the individual. And he went, don't call me on the core values in front of the team. And he walked out of the room. I'm like, oh, fuck, I'm totally getting fired. And I walked into his office and he said, don't call me on the core values in front of the employees. And I don't know where it came from, but my instant response was don't break them. And he thought about it for a minute and he was like, fuck. I visualize the jigsaw puzzle as having these core components. The first component is really the picture on the front of the box, right? Your vivid vision. And then for me, the four corners of your jigsaw puzzle are your core values, your core purpose, your BHAG, which is your big hairy audacious goal that Jim Collins talks about, and then your one-year plan. Do you know that I left College Pro Painters in 1994? Elon Musk's younger brother worked for me that summer. I hired Kimbal Musk and then also his cousin Peter Rieve, who built SolarCity. They were both franchisees for me in 1993. So I leave College Pro in October of '94, 31, 32 years ago. The core values for College Pro Painters: deliver what you promise, respect the individual, pride in all you do, and find a better way. Now, if I can recite the 4 core values for a company that I worked for 32 years ago, I guarantee you, if I walked up to a whole bunch of you who have core values in your company, that 95% of you couldn't recite them. And you don't want to test me on that because I know I'm right. I could bet every single one of you $100 in the room and I would walk out with thousands of dollars that most of you say you have core values, but you don't even know them, which means your employees don't know them. And you certainly don't live them because you have people coming to work every day who break your core values, which means they're not core values, they're merely aspirational core values. At College Pro Painters, we were willing to fire people who broke the core values. I remember in 1993, I was sitting at the head office of College Pro Painters because I worked in Toronto, and one of the vice presidents made a very disrespectful remark to one of the women in our office. In these days, it would have been like a #MeToo bad moment for this person's career. And I called him on it and I was like, Kevin, respect the individual. And he went, don't call me on the core values in front of the team. And he walked out of the room. I'm like, oh fuck, I'm totally getting fired. And then about 10 minutes later, he called me into his office and the rest of the team was like, dude, you are totally getting fired. And I walked into his office and he said, don't call me on the core values in front of the employees. And I don't know where it came from, but my instant response was don't break them. And he thought about it for a minute and he was like, fuck. And Kevin and I, 30-odd years later, are still very good friends, probably because of that moment, because I knew that he didn't mean it. But for him to see me care about the core values so much meant that I would go through brick walls for the company. He had to go through brick walls for me. If your core values are important to you, at least know them. At least enforce them and at least fire people who break them. And by the way, the government and post office are always hiring. They'll take care of your bad people. They'll hire them. But core values are critical.
