Enforcing Your Core Values In Your Company, with Erik J. Olson

Erik J. Olson (00:01):
Enforcing your core values with your company.

What is up? This is Erik J. Olson. If you’re like me and you run a company, you probably have core values. If you run a company and you don’t have core values, you need to go back to the drawing board and think about your core values, because everything you do as a company and the way that you treat your employees, the way that they treat each other, the way that you treat your customers, everything hiring, firing, it should all revolve around a small set of core values as the company manager, founder, owner, whatever your role is, it is your responsibility and your responsibility alone. To define those core values. Now like anything else you can take in some feedback from outside sources, whether it’s employees or partners, or whoever you want about what your core values could be, but it’s ultimately your decision and your decision alone, because you are the visionary for your company and the company needs to largely operate the way that you believe in your belief system.

Erik J. Olson (01:05):
So define core values if you haven’t already, but then once you have them, everything revolves around those core values. So here at Array Digital, as an example we try to use our core values all the time. Monthly company meetings. I’m constantly talking about core values. I will pick one of the core values and I’ll have someone from the company read the definition to the rest of the company. On a daily basis, we have a channel in our slack group called kudos and people can reward points to one another based on a core value. So here’s an example. This is from Ryan plus 10 to Jason for his help, with some hashtag quality Photoshop work. Now that hashtag quality, that quality is one of our core values. So Ryan had to specify which core value Jason was exhibiting in order for Ryan to give Jason points.

Erik J. Olson (02:04):
And the core value was quality. We have five core values here, right? So our core values are transparency, quality, urgency, winning, and passion. So every single day, people are giving kudos to one another in the company. Thanks for this good job on that. Here’s another one from Katya plus 20 to Tyler for his diligence, with the co-op issues for one of our clients, hashtag quality hashtag winning two core values there, right? So this happens day in and day out annual raises annual reviews like in the actual written review, it’s all based on core values. If we are going to terminate someone, we figure out which core value they are not exhibiting on a daily basis or constantly violating core values are central here. As a matter of fact, I’m gonna order t-shirts where everybody in the company. No, I mean, I haven’t publicly

Erik J. Olson (02:58):
Committed to this, but maybe I am. Now, what I wanna do is get hashtag and then the core value and every one of our employees gets one of those. T-Shirts one t-shirt free hashtag. So I, I, I want us to be thinking about core values. I want us to be thinking about core values all the time. I want us to be thinking about nothing but core values. That’s the goal here. So if you don’t already have core values, like I said before, I would super highly recommend that you look into it. You start thinking about what’s important to you in the company in your life and establish those core values. And then once you have them as a business, make sure that you exhibit them, that you personally have to live by them and that you revolve all the work that you do as a company and interacting with your clients and with your staff that aligns with those core values, incredibly important.