As the leadership team concluded a meeting and everyone was leaving the conference room, the project director pulled me aside and said in a voice no one else could hear, “I’m stopping all work on the site in one hour.”
An hour later a lot of nervous chatter could be heard among the nearly 1,000 people gathered outside the manufacturing facility those folks were constructing. “What is this meeting about? Why is the jobsite being shut down on short notice? What is going on?”
The project director took the microphone and began to talk about a safety near miss that had occurred a couple of hours earlier. The project director knew from the specifics of the near miss that people were getting sloppy in their approach to safety.
Safety was a core value of this particular construction company. The founder and CEO of the company was known throughout the industry for his commitment to safety. And that core value had been so instilled in the project director leading that major project that he was confident he was doing the right thing shutting down the work that day even though the project was already behind schedule.
So what about you? Should your company or project have Core Values? Here’s some things to consider:
Core Values define what the company or project stands for.
Core Values clarify expectations and behaviors which leads to teams delivering a high level of performance.
Core Values consistently lived out generate higher team morale.
Core Values provide a valuable framework for making tough decisions.
Core Values help in hiring people who fit the company or project culture and avoiding hiring those who don’t fit.
When Core Values AREN’T lived out, trust and respect are eroded, team members become cynical and then having Core Values becomes detrimental - worse than not having any at all.
Core Values must be articulated, embraced and demonstrated by the leader day in and day out. Just like the project director who stopped work on his project that day.
Team members take their cue from the people leading the organization. If the leadership (at any level) is exempt from abiding by a Core Value, then the team members observing this, deems him or herself exempt as well.
Take a listen to this conversation on The Team of a Lifetime podcast with a construction industry leader. You’ll get his take about whether core values are still relevant today.
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