As well explained in the “Build to Last” book, core values can be a critical factor in the success or failure of an organization. Having been a player in this industry for more than 10 years now, I also strongly believe that core values need to be openly defined and shared, and we need to remind ourselves of them. They often tend to be relegated to the shadowy depths of the hiring binder or put on corporate accessories.

“Build to Last” also hasa nice equation defining the relationship between Core Values and Core Ideology:

Core Ideology = Core Values + Purpose

I like this formula, and today, I will define and share, as openly as I can, our core values. They are only three of them:

Honesty: The hard one.

While this value might seem too obvious to state, and one which should be taken for granted, it is probably the hardest of all to attain. The hard part is not to be honest with others, which I think most people are (in most respects), but rather to be honest with oneself. For example, in business, we have all had or at some point will face the temptation of bending the truth in our favor. Most of the time, it will even work. This can manifest itself by inflating some numbers, forgetting others, making artificial product families, justifying new products just for internal competition, or pushing an organizational bias strategy company wide.

While these actions might look intrinsically dishonest, I do think they can be taken by relatively honest individuals. The issue is that sometimes, people get caught up in the game, forget to be honest with themselves, and just yield to the “picture painting” enticement, which consists of painting the best possible picture with some well placed defects to make it seem real. In short, they forget to ask themselves: “Do I really believe in it?”.

I am deliberately using strong words on this topic, because I think this type of behavior is the biggest corporate virus today, which slowly but surely inhibits the growth of organizational creativity, while rewarding the ones that spread it. My hope is that by placing honesty – with ourselves and with others – at the forefront of Sportner’s core values, I can neutralize or at least slow down the spread and reach of this disease. One thing important to realize though, is that we can all catch it!

Passion: The fun one.

This is the easy and fun one. I do think, as many do, that passion is critical to the success of a company. One way to put it is that passion with focus drives talent, and talent is the source of innovation. As Paul Graham points out in his essay “Mind the Gap,” “One person could be 100 times as productive as another.” This is probably even truer today, in our technology industry, where, given the wealth of freely available technology and services, the real business values are becoming more in the composition of services rather than in the building of one.

As elaborated in “The Tipping point”, small things can have a big impact, and finding these small things does require talent (“Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.”).

Discipline: The not so fun one.

While this one might sound obvious and little bit harsh, I think that real discipline is critical to building a successful business. Too many times, I have seen organizations with a great talent pool not really performing at their maximum because of lack of discipline. One reason is that discipline often gets confused with process, procedures, and paperwork, or even is regarded as opposed to agility and creativity.

I think it could not be further from the truth. I actually think that the right kind of discipline enables agility and creativity, and reduces process and paperwork. Real discipline is more about a state of mind or a working style than procedures. Also, I think that discipline is as critical to execution as passion is to innovation. And, while some might disagree with me, ideas are cheap and execution is everything; hence the importance of discipline.

So, here we go, a raw look at our core values. At some point, I will also go over our anti-values, which are, in my mind, as important.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 30th, 2007 at 11:37 pm and is filed under Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.