Over the Summer we’ve done a series of blog posts covering the Core Values at Blumer CPAs, https://blumercpas.com/, starting with an Introduction that stressed their importance to you as a business owner and how to use them, followed by an examination of each and what they mean to different members of our firm (all linked below):
Coachable, Reliable, Resilient
Transparent, Visible, Accountable
For the final post in this series, I’d like to explore the final piece of Core Values: Implementation.
Blumer is a remote firm. We are scattered across the country and see each other in person once a year, at most. The bedrock of how we stay connected and foster camaraderie is our weekly meeting.
At the end of every meeting we have “Core Value Callouts”, where we go around and each of us highlights at least one other team member that we’ve worked with that week, who has displayed one of our core values in their work. One of the maxims of leadership most of us (hopefully all of us) have heard before is: “praise in public, correct in private.” While I 100% stand behind that principle as a core element of good leadership, how the praise is delivered can shape your business and culture massively, both positively and negatively. Furthermore, Core Value Callouts highlight the accomplishments of the team by their peers —not just key leaders– this is an incredibly valuable process to keep morale high and create buy in from the team.
Delivery
When you praise someone in public you’re making a sweeping statement on a person’s actions that they took to accomplish a specific goal, whether directly or indirectly. If you only focus on the end goal of what they accomplished (“John had the highest close percentage on pitches for the company this quarter!”), there are a lot of lessons, good and bad, left up to the listener to interpret.
How exactly does John close deals? Does it really mean anything to anyone else? Maybe John is a born salesman whose career has led him to make connections that can’t be replicated with hard work or more training. Maybe John actually closes a lot of deals by making the margins too tight for healthy profitability. Maybe John even closes deals with underhanded or unethical tactics that lead to major problems down the road.
Instead, when we praise in the context of Core Values, we highlight the process. We highlight how John did it, or ask him (in advance) to do so himself. We highlight the keys to success, not just the end goal. We try to make this relatable to others and we do so by tying it back to the values we want to foster within our business. Praise and reinforcement go hand in hand – we want to make sure we are reinforcing the right things!
Whole Team Buy-In
The even more potent element of “Core Value Callouts” is the universal participation. Each of us, at some point in our careers, have seen praise heaped on someone for any number of undeserved reasons by an out-of-touch manager that doesn’t know, or even worse doesn’t care, exactly how the end goal they wanted (like higher revenue) was achieved. The negative impacts of this on morale, ethical and sustainable behavior, and team camaraderie are massive.
While we do receive praise from above, we also give and receive praise at the same level, from people who know exactly what we did, how we did it, and know the level of effort it took to do it. The words of peers are often better at highlighting their teammates’ accomplishments in a more constructive way than even leaders can. It speaks volumes when the only people praising John are those above him. On the other hand, cross-team recognition gives you a window into the day-to-day processes of the business that you might be far removed from.
But most importantly, it gets the team thinking and interpreting their own behavior, and that of everyone around them, in the context of the core values you set for your company.
In conclusion, I hope you’ve enjoyed this series on core values and feel better able to design and implement them within your own organization. And I further hope you have taken on a new appreciation for their importance and usefulness. People tend to stay at jobs with great cultures and where they feel appreciated. Implementing core values and encouraging your team to praise each other for living these values is one of the best ways to help make your organization into a place people never want to leave!
Nicholas Greene, CPA, brings compassionate leadership and deep financial expertise to his role as Customer Ally at Blumer CPAs, where he guides clients through contract fulfillment and complex projects with a mission to make good businesses better. He’s passionate about creating tangible impact for entrepreneurs through meaningful financial guidance.
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