We’ve all read the books; Drucker, Collins, Porras, Prahalad, Lencioni, Harnish, Weinberg. We’ve all read the articles, from the classics of Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Wired. We’ve all attended conferences where successful people have spoken about business achievement. We’ve all gone online to watch TED and YouTube videos about exceptional organizational performance. Professionally, I’ve worked with many CEOs, boards of directors, and investors that all corroborate these expert assertions.
No matter what the source, they all say the very same thing: core value-driven companies demonstrate enduring success. Even though nearly all companies have core values, the way their core values are created and live in the company is what makes the difference.
What is the difference between the core values of highly successful and durable companies and companies that never attain sustainable success? What makes some sets of core values commanding and others weak? Although companies can appear to have the same core values, in one company it is a rocket engine and in the other company a rubber band propeller.
Where Do Core Values Come From?
The first thing to recognize is most companies generate core values from the mindset of “having core values is the right thing to do,”or “having core values is what everybody does.” Starting from these platforms never produces powerful and lasting core values.
What enables some company’s core values to be tremendously powerful and robust, while others are feeble and fragile? There must be something intrinsic to a commanding core value that gives the core value its strength. What makes a core value treasured? What’s the substrate of a powerful and everlasting core value? What’s the core of a core value?
It’s apparent that those gripping core values — those core values with the greatest longevity — are transcendent values. They transcend time; they transcend people; they transcend the company’s physical presence.
The definition of transcendent is exceeding usual limits; going beyond the boundaries of the ordinary experience; transcending material existence. If a core value is a molecule that fits this definition of “exceeding the ordinary,” what are the atoms that make up the core value molecule?
A powerful core value cannot be created simply as a cognitive act. It requires far more than just consideration. A cognitively generated core value has no staying power: it has no soul. It has no “juice.” Because it just comes from the head, it doesn’t have the value it needs to be long-lasting. A transcendent core value must also be an authentic expression of the heart and the gut. It has to come from a far deeper place than a cerebral process.
A powerful core value has to touch the human spirit. The human spirit refers to the impersonal, universal, or higher component of human nature in contrast to the identity or lower element. When a core value touches the human spirit, it hits on the longing of people to contribute, to participate, to make a difference; to give unselfishly of themselves, to work for a higher purpose.
When a core value is transcendent, it possesses a quality that inspires. It is not just the words, but how the words touch people. For example, “integrity” tops many core value lists. People might express integrity in many different ways — “do the right thing,” “be honest,” or “be your word.” But how does that value of integrity manifest in the expressions of leadership and in the culture? How is the value experienced by employees, customers, and the market? Does the core value occur as a platitude; a cliché; a good intention? Or does it exist as a heavy, radiating pulse throughout the company? Does integrity exist only as a banality or as something profound and moving?
A transcendent core value is not the “right” one or “what others have, so we should too.”
A transcendent value transcends time. It is not about today or the recent past. A transcendent core value has power in the future. A transcendent core value resides in the permanent — integrity, responsibility, service, making a difference.
Transcendental Values
If you study the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, or Reverend Desmond Tutu, the values of which they spoke were transcendental values. When you read the books of Howard Schultz, Sir Richard Branson, or Jack Welsh — although not quite as lofty as Gandi or King — their core values transcend time, people, and the past.
When closely observed, there is no separation between these leaders and their transcendent core values. They are one and the same. Great leaders don’t have core values; great leaders are those core values, in being and action.
Where the core values come from is the ultimate determinant of the power and longevity of the core value. Core values that transcend the company, the people in the company, and other vested stakeholders; core values that are birthed from a place beyond the mind, but from the heart and the soul as well — those are the values that are the most powerful and perpetual.
Highly successful leaders can reach deep inside themselves to find that place where their greater humanity lives. From this primordial and timeless place, leaders can articulate a transcendental core value. And leaders know it’s a transcendent core value because it is not only what they think it, but it is also what they deeply feel. What gives a core value power are not simply the words or the definitions of the words, but the depth, the emotion, and the higher good ignited by the core value.
— Marc
From “The Business Book of Wisdom,” available March 2019
Read more about Core Values here.
