Vision and mission

It's conventional to pair statements of purpose with statements of vision. While there are a number of competing descriptions of what a corporate vision is for, it is generally defined in terms of a more tangible and measurable future goal. Collins and Porras describe visions as ‘big, hairy, audacious goals … a unifying focal point of effort (with a) clear finish line’.¹ In my experience, most companies find inspiring and energizing vision statements much harder than clear and compelling statements of purpose. Very few companies have as inspiring and tangible a goal as ‘putting a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth’.¹⁰ It's also increasingly difficult to deliver and stick to such a tangible future goal, given the speed and unpredictability of change in most marketplaces. As a result, vision statements tend to default to generic definitions of future leadership (biggest, best or both), or they end up sounding very similar to statements of purpose. For example, Hilton's vision is: ‘To fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality’, which from my perspective is as close to an enduring statement of purpose as any company could wish for.¹¹ The best vision statements, like the best statements of purpose, explain what the organization seeks to contribute to the world. For example, Microsoft's celebrated vision of putting: ‘a computer on every desk and in every home’¹² or my all-time favourite from Henry Ford:

‘To build a motor car for the great multitude … so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one, and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces.’¹³

These statements hit the mid-ground between purpose and vision, which is often described as ‘mission’.

The Core Values of Guardian Media Group

The same is true of The Guardian Media Group in the UK, whose core values directly reflect the personal philosophy of C.P. Scott, the famous Manchester Guardian editor, who outlined the paper's principles in a celebrated article marking the paper's centenary in 1921. It provides a highly eloquent illustration of an organization with a moral as well as a business purpose. As he states

‘Character is a subtle affair. It is not a thing to be much talked about, but rather to be felt. It is the slow deposit of past actions and ideals. It is for each man his most precious possession, and so it is for the newspaper.’ ¹⁵

C.P. Scott then goes onto list the Guardian newspaper's guiding values as: honesty, cleanness, courage, fairness, a sense of duty to the reader and the community (‘cleanness’ would today be interpreted to mean ‘integrity’).

While the language chosen here reflects the time in which it was written, the underlying meaning is broadly similar to most sets of corporate values. They simply represent the principles most people would recognize as healthy and productive in any organization.

Johnson & Johnson's credo

Johnson & Johnson's celebrated credo was crafted in 1943 by Robert Wood Johnson, chairman from 1932 to 1963, and a member of the Company's founding family, and still remains a guiding influence on the way the business is managed. I've provided an annotated version below, making note of the ‘classic’ value categories that continue to re-appear consistently across most organizations.

‘We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services. [Customer Focus] In meeting their needs everything we do must be of high quality. [Quality & Excellence] We must constantly strive to reduce our costs in order to maintain reasonable prices. [Resourcefulness] Customers’ orders must be serviced promptly and accurately. [Attention to Detail] Our suppliers and distributors must have an opportunity to make a fair profit.

We are responsible to our employees, the men and women who work with us throughout the world. Everyone must be considered as an individual. We must respect their dignity and recognize their merit. [Respect] They must have a sense of security in their jobs. Compensation must be fair and adequate, and working conditions clean, orderly and safe. [Health & Safety] We must be mindful of ways to help our employees fulfil their family responsibilities. [Work–Life Balance] Employees must feel free to make suggestions and complaints. [Openness] There must be equal opportunity for employment, [Diversity] development and advancement for those qualified. [Learning & Development] We must provide competent management, and their actions must be just and ethical. [Integrity]We are responsible to the communities in which we live and work and to the world community as well. We must be good citizens — support good works and charities and bear our fair share of taxes. We must encourage civic improvements and better health and education. We must maintain in good order the property we are privileged to use, protecting the environment and natural resources. [Corporate Social Responsibility]

Our final responsibility is to our stockholders. Business must make a sound profit. [Performance] We must experiment with new ideas. Research must be carried on, innovative programs developed and mistakes paid for. [Innovation] New equipment must be purchased, new facilities provided and new products launched. Reserves must be created to provide for adverse times. When we operate according to these principles, the stockholders should realize a fair return.'¹⁶

Compare this with the following:

‘Deliver WOW Through Service

Embrace and Drive Change

Create Fun and A Little Weirdness

Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded

Pursue Growth and Learning

Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication

Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit

Do More With Less

Be Passionate and Determined

Be Humble’

You'll note that there are a lot of similarities, but also a few differences that mark Zappos out as a different kind of organization than J&J. The main difference, as for any self-consciously ‘non-corporate’ company is ‘create fun and a little weirdness’ (the ‘fun’ value you'll note is shared with Southwest Airlines).

Comparing those FTSE 100 companies who included a statement of core values on their website in 2004 and 2014 (Table 3.1) reveals a number of interesting insights. The first notable finding is that 20% more of these leading companies stated their values in 2014 compared with a decade ago. Integrity/trust remains by far the most common value. They've been combined, as they seldom appear together and are generally described in a very similar way. While the top nine values are the same on both lists, it's perhaps surprising to note that ‘Innovation/Creativity’ and ‘Openness/Honesty’ are less prevalent in 2014 than they were in 2004. (These values were combined for the same reason as ‘Integrity/Trust’.) From an employer brand perspective, you'll note the generic nature of many core values, but also the potential for differentiation. Values like ‘Entrepreneurship’ (TUI), ‘Fun’ (BSkyB), ‘Courage’ (BP) and ‘Simplicity’ (Glencore Xstrata), are potentially more powerful from a brand perspective because they suggest something different from the norm. They could potentially represent cultural signatures, which if truly embedded in the organization could serve to attract and engage people with a strong personal preference for these qualities.

Source: People in Business analysis 2004 and 2014

The conundrum, as with any form of brand building, is that if you want your values to connect with your key stakeholders, it pays to consult with them first; however, the more you consult the more likely you will be to end up with a generic broad consensus than a distinctive and compelling ideology. You need to aim for a healthy balance. This means:

• Starting with a leadership perspective on the culture and values you most want to build or reinforce.
• Checking whether these resonate with your target audiences (particularly those line managers and employees you regard as your best all-round performers). The key questions here are credibility (now or in the foreseeable future) and appeal (are they likely to engender pride and commitment?).
• Distilling the potential values down to a final list, which balances the desired leadership perspective with the ‘voice of the people’ who need to put them into practice.

The approach taken by Zappos' CEO, Tony Hsieh, provides a useful illustration of how this works in practice.

‘I thought about all the employees I wanted to clone because they represented the Zappos culture well, and tried to figure out what values they personified. I also thought about all the employees and ex-employees who were not culture fits, and tried to figure out where there was a values disconnect. As I started creating the list, I realized that I needed to get everyone's input on what our core values should be. … Over the course of a year, I emailed the entire company several times and got a lot of suggestions and feedback on which core values were the most important to our employees. I was surprised the process took so long, but we wanted to make sure not to rush through the process because whatever core values we eventually came up with, we wanted to be ones that we could truly embrace. … We eventually came up with our final list of 10 core values, which we still use today.’¹⁸

One final case in point. For a number of years my favourite example of a bold and distinctive set of values belonged to Channel 4, one of the UK's leading independent television companies.

For a number of years, Channel 4's values were stated as follows.¹⁹

‘Do it First

Channel 4 has become synonymous with pushing limits, and with our freedom we should keep on doing that.

Make Trouble

While we don't make trouble for the sake of it, a season with no trouble is one with too little creative risk.

Inspire Change

Channel 4 wants to challenge the views of the world and open minds.'

I'm sure you'll agree that these statements leave you with no doubt about the distinctive spirit of the Company and what it stands for. However, this example can now only be provided in the past tense. Channel 4's newly scrubbed (and no doubt widely consulted) values now read as follows.²⁰Channel 4's Core Values

‘Creativity

We know our viewers to be intelligent and we must respect their views and judgements. Therefore we support creativity and excellence in all forms, whether it is the people who work at Channel 4, the unique relationship we have with our independent producers, or in the programmes and services that we provide.

Innovation

Channel 4's remit to innovate is at the heart of its commercial and creative success and we continue to aim to be the leading broadcaster of innovation. We are committed to making genuinely original programmes, developing new talent first and pioneering new ideas for television – both in the form and content of our programmes.

Diversity

Channel 4 believes in individual freedom and seeks to promote diversity of opinion and freedom of expression. We support ideas and thinking that bring genuinely new perspectives and creativity. We seek to enlighten viewers and challenge the unproven – not to convert them or lead them towards one particular view of thinking.'

This is a more comprehensive statement. It's more diplomatic and inclusive. But has something important been lost?

My overall point is that core values tend to gravitate to a fairly broad and similar set of qualities that provide a useful foundation for responsible internal and external corporate behaviours, but fail to fulfil two very important characteristics of effective value propositions. The first and most obvious of these characteristics is differentiation. Few value statements are designed to distinguish the organization from their competitors. As long as they resonate with key stakeholders and promote the kind of good behaviours required by an organization to function effectively, then they are generally felt to be fit for purpose. The second characteristic is that core values tend to be communicated as employee obligations (this is what we expect of you), rather than benefits (this is what you can expect from us). Likewise, they tend to prioritize what the organization needs to perform (customer focus/innovation/performance) rather than what the employee tends to look for most in an employer (empowerment/development/career progression). There is clearly some overlap here, but core values tend not to be sufficiently distinctive or benefit-led to function effectively as employee value propositions.

Given the broad remit of corporate values and the specific purpose of the employee value proposition to define the key qualities that distinguish the organization as an employer, there is therefore a general need to tailor and augment the values where necessary to create an effective EVP. This does not mean starting from scratch. It is important to stress that the core values should always provide a starting point, and where possible the EVP should be as aligned as possible to the core values in terms of structure and language.

There are three circumstances when you should consider translating the existing values more directly into the Employee Value Proposition:

1. When the core values are sufficiently distinctive and tailored to employee needs. Zappos' core values are distinctive enough (‘fun and a little weirdness’) and sufficiently benefit-led for employees (‘growth and learning’) to double-up as an EVP.
2. When the core values are so front-of-mind and well-embedded that a separate EVP would only serve to confuse people. An example of this would be Nationwide, the UK's leading building society, whose PRIDE values were so well embedded that the primary task was simply to ensure that the benefit of these values were as clear for employees as for customers.
3. When the core values have only recently been launched, or they are being developed in parallel with the EVP. In this situation it's important to ensure the EVP is as tightly aligned to the values as possible to avoid unnecessary ‘noise’ and confusion.

Even where the EVP is more specifically tailored to the employment deal it pays to ensure clear conceptual alignment with the core purpose and values as in the following example from BP.

SUMMARY AND KEY CONCLUSIONS

1. A company's employer brand should be intimately linked with its corporate brand values and purpose.
2. A compelling corporate ideology, like the fundamental ideals of a great nation, plants a fixed stake in the ground: ‘This is who we are, this is what we stand for.’
3. Statements of purpose fail in their purpose if they do no more than recount generic corporate objectives. A compelling purpose, like a compelling brand promise, should be concise, focused and inspire belief in a higher cause.
4. Core values should define an organization's guiding principles, and shine through the way the company communicates and behaves towards all the different stakeholder groups the company relies on for success.
5. The fact that core values tend to be similar across most companies need not be a concern, as their primary role in most cases is to establish consistent standards of responsible corporate behaviour rather than distinctive competitive advantage.
6. Employee Value Propositions serve to translate the corporate values into the employment context, clarifying their ‘value’ to employees and highlighting those aspects of brand ideology, culture and future aspiration that are of greatest relevance to talent attraction and engagement.
7. Where corporate values are sufficiently distinctive and employee focused they can often be translated directly into an Employee Value Proposition.
8. Where corporate values have only been recently launched and communicated, care should be taken to align the EVP as closely as possible to these values to avoid unnecessary confusion. In this situation, the EVP or ‘People Promise’ should ideally be positioned as a means of embedding the values in people management practice, rather than a separate or additional proposition.