Honesty is NOT a Value | Simon Sinek

So my favorite definition of culture is culture equals values plus behavior.

And so you have to have a clear set of values first. And innovation, honesty. You know, these aren't values. Those are the things we write on the wall. But those are nouns. And if it's values plus behavior, it's things we want people to do. Everybody thinks they're honest, yet everybody tells lies.

So the value isn't be honest the value or honesty. The value is tell the truth. The value isn't innovation. You can't walk into someone's office and say, a little more innovation today, please. Right? You know, doesn't like nobody. You can't innovate, you can't execute on innovation. It's not an instruction. But you can tell people, look at the problem from a different angle, like that's something you can do. And by the way, your values are not aspirational. They're not a bunch of executives sitting at an off site cutting pictures out of magazines and saying, this is the company we want to be. Your values are who you are when you are at your natural best. Your culture already exists, but you're not necessarily always operating at your natural best. And that's as true for companies as it is for individuals. And so to uncover your values is not aspirational. It's a process of discovery. And then you can write down, I've never seen more than five. Weirdly don't understand the biology, but when you start getting more than five, they start to overlap enough that you could probably eliminate one of them, which I think is interesting. But there's, there's, there's at least as. Sorry, there's at most five values, three to five, that are who you are when you operate at your natural best. And now the question is, is, can you develop recognition, rewards, incentives to promote those values? Are you talking about those values? Are you hiring to those values? Are you firing people who may be high performers but refuse to live to those values? Because then what you're doing is reinforcing to the rest of the company that the values matter more than anything else. Which is really important, because if we talk about values, but then all we do is promote toxic team members who are high performers. And we've all had this happen where sometimes even management knows, you're like, you know, that person is a real asshole. They're like, I know, but their numbers are so good, right? And then we let them be. And so that sends a message to the rest of the company that we're talking about these values, but we don't actually believe it. And so you don't necessarily have to fire the person, but we do have to coach that person.