Chad Silverstein stopped imposing values from above and instead co-created core values with his leadership team by identifying top performers, listing their admired traits, and narrowing to 5-6 values. He enforces them through public recognition, tangible rewards, and hiring and firing decisions.
Chapters
I always wanted to build the kind of company that I wanted to work in, the kind of company culture that I would want my kids to work in. So early on, I worked really hard to write out what I believed would be a great set of core values for my company culture and ones that I could share with my team and get everybody to buy in. And I got my list as clear as possible so I could articulate them during team meetings, because I knew if I wanted them to stick, they were going to have to hear me repeat them over and over again. But after a while, I realized there was a big problem with this strategy, because I was telling everyone what I wanted, but I had no clue what they wanted. So one day, I decided to change things up and do something different. And I sat down with my team, and we put the names of our highest performers up on a whiteboard, the names of people that we felt we would love to duplicate if we could. And we wrote down everything we loved about them and why. And we shared what we thought made them so incredible by describing their personalities and their behaviors and the traits that described why they were such high performers. And we came up with this really long, cool list of ways to describe this perfect person. And then we narrowed it down, and our team went back and forth until we landed on about five or six ways to describe this individual. We discussed, and then we agreed on what the core values were behind each one of them. And together, we played with the words and made them sound and feel like us as a team, because our goal was to give them a flavor that described the culture that we wanted more of. We didn't know it at the time, but we were also creating a way for us to hold each other accountable, because you can be sure that when we walked out of that room, things would never be the same for anyone who showed or acted the opposite of the list that we work so hard to create. Once we shared this with everyone else on our team, something cool happened. It sounded very different this time because it didn't come from just me. The fact that my leadership team did this together and I had their buy in it made the experience that much more meaningful for everyone. I told everyone that I was going to start recognizing and rewarding people who champion these core values, because, again, I wanted it to stick. So I asked each of my leaders to pick one person from their team who they felt best personified one of our new core values. And we stood up in front of our entire team, and we highlighted one person who did something during the month. That best described the core value that we wanted more of. Because, you see, talk is cheap. You can say things 10,000 times, but when people see it, they can feel it. And when they can feel it, they can live it. And this took our core values to a whole new level. I gave people bonuses and had paid time off given out. I noticed people started catching others doing good things around the office so they can highlight them during our next team meeting. And people were actually doing things to try to exhibit that core value. To take this a step further, I also decided to start hiring and firing people for our core values. Because here's the thing. You can teach people skills and people can become talented if they work hard enough. But you can't change someone's core values. The right fit, the right people, they'll buy in. And these are the kind of individuals you need in order to build a successful company culture where people will run through walls for you. What are you throwing up on your walls? What core values are you living? What are your employees saying behind your back about your culture? If you want to transform your culture into a best place to work that employees will love, then you have to sit down with them and figure out what core values you want to use to hold people accountable. And then you actually have to do it. That's right. You gotta call people out and have tough conversations. You have to make it a discipline. If you want to top workplace culture, then start hiring, firing, recognizing, and rewarding your team for exactly what you want. And who knows? If you're one of the few, you might just get it.
