Life at Viam

June 23, 2023

A playbook for creating meaningful company values

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Emily Egan

Head of People

Why values early on are important

Some people may think that Series A is too early for values. I disagree. Startups are the lifeblood for tech innovation, but most startups do not see huge levels of success. There are a million reasons for that; poor market conditions, bad ideas, competition, etc. As Head of People, I believe an often overlooked reason for start-up failure is a lack of values. Let’s break this down.

When you don’t have clear values, you run into an unlimited number of problems. You do not hire the right people because your plan is unclear. You excuse poor behavior in lieu of performance, which negatively affects employees, leading to higher rates of attrition. Communication is a mess. If you value moving fast but do not state that explicitly, people will move slow. If you value consensus but nobody knows, people are left out of decision making.

When you have clear values, you have a much easier time reaching success. Values lay the foundation of what a company cares about most, gives employees a shared sense of purpose, and creates shared language for them to use in their daily work lives. So, given all of this, what are the steps of building your unique and scalable values for your company?

Values lay the foundation of what a company cares about most, gives employees a shared sense of purpose, and creates shared language for them to use in their daily work lives.

Step 1: Research

After my call with Albert, I immediately went into research mode. I approached this by reading books and articles, and investigating other companies.

Books and articles

Before I began any internal research or competitive analysis, I wanted to get my bearings. Understanding the fundamentals of company culture from an organizational psychology perspective was the clear first step for getting into the right mindset for my approach. Based on recommendations from peers and gut instinct, I started with three books.

The first book was No Rules Rules: Netflix and Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer. This was a fantastic start. Many people already know that Netflix has an intense, but successful culture. Hastings and Meyers talk about how that culture was developed. I then read The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. What do Pixar and the Navy Seals have in common? Strong cultures. I was able to get a sense of various cultures spanning different industries and groups, and the thread behind the successful ones. Last, I read Grit by Angela Duckworth. This one was actually recommended to me when I was speaking with Albert about our values.

There were a few other articles that I found useful:

• How to Write (And Live) Your Company’s Core Values - by Indeed
• How to Develop and Use Core Values - by The Management Center

Competitive analysis

Once I had a good mindset around the landscape thinking around culture and values, I started to research other companies. I compiled a list of companies that I respected and looked up their values. Some values came up again and again in so many words, such as the theme of collaboration. What became clear to me during this process is that I did not want a laundry list of cultural traits. I wanted 5-7 core values (we landed on 6) that were scalable but not so broad that they left too much latitude in their interpretation. I also wanted our values to be actions rather than descriptors.

Step 2: Employee engagement

Values are not going to be successful if you tell people what you want the culture to be. Yes, having a lighthouse as a beacon to aspire to is an important aspect of this process, but you also need to define what current culture is. Combined, you can create the core tenants of your values. I did this in two steps: 1:1 sessions with each employee (or a survey) and breakout sessions.

Employee 1:1s or company survey

We were a small enough company when we started, that I was able to meet with each employee in a 1:1 setting to get a sense of how they defined the culture at Viam.

Here are the questions that I found useful in these conversations:

• What was your reason for joining Viam?
• Where were you before Viam? What is your story on how you came here?
• How would you describe the culture here?

Breakout sessions

The breakout sessions were the most impactful part of the process. Not only was it informative to the shaping of the values, but it also allowed for the entire process to be interactive and engaging. I held several sessions over the course of three weeks with our employees.

Each session had around 10 people in them. The first task was for everyone to individually write down what they thought our company currently valued and to write down what they would like our values to be.

Step 3: Leadership involvement

After I synthesized all the data from the employee sessions, I met with our leadership team. I presented them with an information packet from my employee sessions and shared my findings.

From there, I worked with a much smaller team to wordsmith the values. Once the smaller team felt good about what we had created, we shared with leadership for approval.

Step 4: Values rollout

Congratulations, you have company values ! Depending on your company’s communication style, size, location, etc. this could all look very different. Values are supposed to be a living organ in your company, not a fashion trend that goes out of style.

The email outlined the values and their bullet points, but in the All-Hands, I reviewed how we got to the values so that the process was very transparent. We added our values to our onboarding process so that employees were familiar with them prior to stepping foot in the office, as well as adding them to our orientation presentation.

Shaping your company culture

We all have had experiences with company values. My hope is that we all can strive for the former, to create a shared sense of purpose and community by defining the core values of the company.

The process I outlined worked really well for us, and perhaps it could work well for you.