Values Are Verbs

They are things we DO.

A team member and I had a disagreement recently – she said family was an example of a value. I adamantly disagreed. “No,” I said, “family is a noun…it’s not a value.” That discussion led me to do some reflecting on what constitutes a value and what doesn’t. What I realized is that values are verbs. They are things we DO. They are how we ACT. And we live them out every day.

All too often, we talk about our core values, but we don’t live them out. As leadership guru Patrick Lencioni noted in a recent podcast, we stick them on a poster or a t-shirt, but we don’t operationalize them. They don’t become a part of how we act…every day, in every situation. An organization can claim integrity as a core value, but if they’re busy stealing intellectual property from a competitor, that claim quickly falls apart.

ISI Consulting just worked with a community group that identified “accessible” as a core value. Now, if you look it up in a dictionary, accessible is an adjective, not a verb. But the group’s description was all about actions and behaviors. They understood that any activity or initiative they undertook must be user-friendly, understandable, and easy to navigate. Now, do I need to see framed artwork in their conference room with the word “accessible” on it to know that this is a value? Heck, no! I see it on their website, in their presentations to the community, and in the programs they offer. Everything they do looks, feels, even tastes and smells, accessible. They live this core value.

Your organization should be the same. Your core values (and you shouldn’t have but two or three) should saturate every action you take. They should be behavioral attributes that everyone in the organization exhibits all the time. If they’re not, board members and team members should speak up. Ask yourself, “Are we really honoring this value?” If you’re not, it’s time for a change.

Stay Sharp, 

Holly Hayes, President & Founder
ISI Consulting