S1E6: The Value of Values

Show Notes

Summary

In this episode of The Intentional Organization Podcast, Mathias Meyer and Sara Hicks dig into "the value of values": why so many corporate values end up as hollow murals on office walls, and what it actually takes to make them mean something. Both hosts share how they were initially skeptical of values (Mathias recalls a formative conversation with his coach; Sara had a similar reaction early in her career), and how they came to see values not as fixed end-states but as living guides for behavior, decision-making, and trade-offs.

They unpack why single-word values like "trust," "integrity," "happiness," and "transparency" tend to fall flat. These describe outcomes or legal baselines rather than actionable behaviors, and they don't differentiate one company from another. The conversation returns repeatedly to a favorite definition: values are what you tolerate and what you reward. They walk through real examples, including conflict between "customer obsession" and "craft/quality," toxic on-vacation check-ins, the "brilliant asshole" who won't collaborate, and how values can (and can't) guide hard calls like layoffs or difficult customer and vendor decisions.

The episode closes with practical advice on operationalizing values: writing them down with explanatory sentences (not just single words), building in regular check-ins (30/90 days, then annually), highlighting real examples of values in action, and avoiding the trap of tying them directly to performance reviews.

Keywords

company values, culture, leadership, executive coaching, decision making, trust, transparency, work-life balance, feedback, organizational culture

Takeaways

• Values only work when they're grounded in specific behaviors. Vague single words like "trust," "integrity," or "happiness" describe outcomes, not actions, and are easy to write but hard to live.

• The most useful definition discussed: values are what you tolerate and what you reward, not what's printed on a wall.

• Values inevitably create tension with each other (e.g., "customer obsession" vs. "craft/quality"). The goal isn't to eliminate that tension but to have honest conversations about the trade-offs.

• Culture and values are inseparable from communication. How feedback, bad news, and decisions get communicated is the culture, whether or not it's written down.

• Writing values down (with explanatory context, not just single words) makes it possible to have grounded, less emotional conversations about hard calls, including managing out a "brilliant asshole" who doesn't fit.

• Values don't need to live only at the top of an organization. Teams and departments can have their own values that ladder up to the company's.

• Tolerating small boundary violations (like employees checking in during vacation or repeatedly asking teams to work weekends) quietly erodes stated values like work-life balance, even without anyone saying so.

• Values should function as a decision-making framework for genuinely hard questions (who to sell to, who to hire, how to handle layoffs), not as a guarantee that hard decisions won't happen.

• Operationalizing values requires ongoing work: revisit them at 30/90 days after creation, review annually, gather input from both new and tenured employees, and regularly highlight real examples of values in action.

• Be cautious about tying values directly to performance reviews.

Chapters

00:00 The Quest for a Value-Driven Culture

01:55 Transforming Values into Action

02:12 Introduction to the Value of Values

04:22 The Evolution of Understanding Values

10:04 Defining Values and Their Importance

13:20 Navigating Tensions Between Values

17:45 The Connection Between Values and Culture

22:32 Critiquing Common Values: Trust and Integrity

27:21 Values in Practice: What They Really Mean

31:35 Cultural Differences in Work Ethics

32:22 Establishing and Enforcing Company Values

34:21 Navigating Tough Decisions: Layoffs and Values

38:11 The Role of Values in Decision-Making

48:29 Operationalizing Values in the Workplace

Transcript

Mathias Meyer (00:00) During my first stint as a founder and executive, then as the CEO, I found myself wanting to build a different company culture. At that point, I'd seen so many examples of places I wouldn't want to work at anymore. So how hard can that be, right? I had a conversation with my coach about this, and we inevitably arrived at the question of values. Could they be useful in helping shape the company culture?

I had a visceral reaction to their question. I hadn't experienced working in a truly value-driven company myself, and my main association were hollow words painted on office walls and fancy murals. My coach called me out on this response and we talked about how things could be different. Values only ring hollow when they're too generic and lacking any meaning.

or lacking any grounding in the real behaviors. In other words, the culture in an organization. I think that triggered my response and made it so visceral. It is too easy to have murals painted or make posters that describe values and what they are supposed to mean. You can almost consider that the easy part. Get your leadership team together

Throw a bunch of words into the mix like trust, transparency, integrity, your work is done. Now is up to the entire organization to live them to the fullest. Leaders do thrive on the idea that change happens just because you say you want it to happen. That behaviors change just because you say they're supposed to change. But that's not how people work. Values can be helpful here.

But they are only the beginning. The real work comes after the murals have been painted. Join Sara and I as we explore the value of values, how they tend to fiddle out after they're first created, and what you can do to make them stick.

Mathias Meyer (02:18) Hey, today we're talking about the value of values. And I have an interesting relationship with values, like historically. And I will just dive right into that to get us started. my earliest days as a founder, when I worked as a CEO, I had a conversation with my coach about values

Sara Hicks (02:27) . .

Mathias Meyer (02:43) And I mentioned how, weird and off putting I found them at the time. And she asked me why. And I talked about values as a thing that companies put on walls, they're nice murals and offices.

that supposedly espouse What the company is all about and you know are there to remind people of whatever the spirit in the company is supposed to be in there to me it always felt like

know, there's a there's a there's a yelling involved there or there's a weird

Sara Hicks (03:20) You

Mathias Meyer (03:20) and uncomfortable

or to be uncomfortable, just rubbing it in people's faces that this is the company we are and we want you to pay attention to this every single day.

And I've come to appreciate them for a very different thing. know, as we're basically talking about today, describe a company culture, right? They describe something, something that you want to exist, something how you want people to be together.

And values, having values doesn't necessarily have to mean they need to be written on a wall. Like you don't have, that's what I've learned early on is like

Sara Hicks (04:04) Okay. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (04:05) you don't actually have to write them on a wall, which is even more difficult than a remote company. You don't have to do that. You don't have pretend or you don't even have to fall into your own mental or my own mental trap at that time that.

values maybe are pretense but they are actually useful to describe, well, like say an ideal state of how a company is, right? How people work together, how people are towards each other and also towards their customers.

Sara Hicks (04:33) Okay.

Mathias Meyer (04:41) I know that's my my little entry story. I think I've come to I've come around to really appreciating values as a valuable thing. Pardon the pun, but the title

Sara Hicks (04:52) Good. Good one.

Mathias Meyer (04:54) of this episode is the value of values. So there might be more puns. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Sara Hicks (04:59) I see what you did. I see what you did there.

Mathias Meyer (05:02) I mean today I wouldn't want to live without them. I think they're still

There's still a cringy aspect to them where values can feel very hollow. But to me, they're just a nice tool to express, like even for myself, like how do, how I think about the world or how do I think about myself in say a leadership role or as an executive coach or, you know, whatever, like they, just helped me.

determine what that person is like and what I want my behaviors to be that help me be that person. It doesn't always work out,

Sara Hicks (05:39) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (05:41) not a final destination. It's a progression when it comes to values. What about you,

Sara Hicks (05:48) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (05:48) Sara Do you have any stories?

Sara Hicks (05:50) boy, yeah. I mean, I don't know if I'd heard your story about values and yeah, I really, feel like I could have had that same conversation with my coach early in my career about values and them just feeling almost like an eye roll, like, sure, yeah. Or the things on the wall, right? They're just so performative.

Mathias Meyer (06:12) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (06:12) And there is a part of it that yes, they are aspirational.

but they have to be part of.

of the fabric of the company and how you make decisions and how you give feedback and how you assess each other and have to be part of trade-offs and decision-making and if they're not, then yeah, they're just things on a wall or things in a company Google Drive. So I've definitely had that experience.

And like you, think I came to appreciate values as a helpful mechanism making decisions and in establishing a culture and also understanding that they really weren't, you know, they're not meant to be hard, strict rules like, you know, they are flexible or there's a hierarchy or there's the one I could think of that

I often see with my coaching clients and have had versions of is some, companies have the value of we are customer obsessed.

Mathias Meyer (07:15) Mmm. yeah.

Sara Hicks (07:17) and then they have another value, which is like, we, we value every pixel or every pixel matters, or we are quality and craft focused.

And now if your biggest enterprise customer needs something delivered by Tuesday and there's a lot of money on the line, you might have to cut some corners with your pixels and your craft and the way you might build something. And I think those are like, those tensions exist within values and

Mathias Meyer (07:53) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (07:54) that doesn't make them.

you wrong or doesn't mean you're not true to your values. It's mean you're using your values to like understand that there are trade-offs. There are decisions. I think one of the keys there is how you use the values and how you bend and how you're flexible and how you are communicating that yeah, sometimes you do have to make some decisions. I don't know.

I've just seen that happen. I experienced that happen.

Mathias Meyer (08:18) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (08:19) And, you know, people get really frustrated. They're like, I thought we valued pixels. And you're like, and the other person saying, well, I thought we valued customer obsession. And you're like, OK, well, let's back up a second

Mathias Meyer (08:32) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (08:33) and and just remember, you know, these values are not these rules and really strict.

Mathias Meyer (08:40) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (08:40) principles.

So yeah, I've seen that happen. I've actually experienced that happen in my own companies. I see it happen so often in the companies that, you know, coach. And so I just think it's just important that when you get into those situations that the conversation itself is what's healthy.

you're at least having the conversation that you're making these trade-offs, that you're consciously and intentionally saying, you know what? Yes, we are gonna, maybe cut a few corners here we're aware of that and we're not gonna abandon it completely. It's a step forward now. You know, like those, that's the right conversation to be having.

Mathias Meyer (09:16) Yeah, everybody has an ideal picture of what they want, like the environment, the organization, the company and the culture to be. And sometimes, I mean, as you said, like there can be tension in between how people interpret this for themselves. these tensions are normal. Like there's no way where you can have a set of values.

is no situation where you might not run into a conflict. There was a lot of

Sara Hicks (09:46) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (09:46) negatives in one sentence, but I think

Sara Hicks (09:48) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (09:50) the tension is always there and will, as you said, like will only resolve itself from conversation and from exploring the nuances of these values. But what I we're,

I love all of this because I think the tensions are

Sara Hicks (10:06) you

Mathias Meyer (10:07) really what people struggle with in, well, putting values into practice. And also, as you said, like making those kinds of decisions. But let's talk about what they even are. Like, what are values?

Sara Hicks (10:20) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (10:21) What does that mean,

Sara Hicks (10:24) Okay, so what are values? I mean, I think our values are...

Yeah, it does get into culture. behaviors you want to see. Some of it is aspirational. It's the behaviors you want to of instill in your organization and in your people.

Mathias Meyer (10:40) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (10:40) It's a little bit of like how the company works together and how the people work together and how the teams work together.

Yeah, it's all those things. It's an action word. Like it's how you show up. It's

Mathias Meyer (10:52) Mm-mm.

Sara Hicks (10:53) again, guiding principles. It's like how we want to interact with each other. In advance of this episode, I went back to our values for the intentional organization, our company, and they don't live on a wall. I could tell you that would be challenging because

One would be in Germany and one would be in the United States.

Mathias Meyer (11:16) We could make

it happen. We could make it happen.

Sara Hicks (11:19) They are

in a shared company notion. And yeah, it just helps us to kind of what defines our partnership and how we want to be with each other, but also, you know, the type of company we aspire to build. So yeah,

Mathias Meyer (11:35) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (11:35) those are a lot of things, but I think mostly it's about desired behaviors. If I had to kind of summarize

Mathias Meyer (11:39) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (11:40) it, yeah.

Mathias Meyer (11:42) Which, I mean, is also where a lot of values fall short because they don't necessarily describe behaviors because, I mean, it's a difficult thing to picture what desired behaviors, what that actually looks like. But yeah, I like that. I mean, that's also how I view them is this is how we want to be or this is how we work together. This is how

you know, show up to our customers or clients. And, you know, also helping with decision making, things like that. It's

Sara Hicks (12:12) Yep. Yep.

Mathias Meyer (12:13) their tools for all of that. And again, that's where many values fall short. And I think one key thing is also like values don't just have to exist on the top level of an organization.

Like they can even break down into

Sara Hicks (12:31) Hmm

Mathias Meyer (12:32) different parts of the organization. Like say, you know, my specialty engineering could have values that derive or play into the organization's values, but I'm more specific to how the behaviors in the engineering departments are. There could be something about, you know, how we prioritize quality, security, performance, all of those things, or

shipping things or working in small chunks rather than doing big pushes.

Sara Hicks (13:02) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (13:04) Say a marketing department or product department, there

Sara Hicks (13:06) Right there.

Mathias Meyer (13:08) could be an entirely different set. Ideally, they all play to biggest set of values and behaviors that the organization has or at least try to as much as possible not be

in conflict with those because I mean that could be problematic but again like when there is a tension even there it can be intentional and you just need to resolve resolve it through conversations.

Sara Hicks (13:25) Okay.

Mathias Meyer (13:33) And so, I mean, we talked about a few things what values are what they really are. why, why would you why would you even need them? I mean, why is behaviors you could also argue, people will just pick them up by observing others in the organization and will automatically follow suit. And

Sara Hicks (13:36) Okay. Okay.

Mathias Meyer (13:56) you know, ideally emulate what they see in other people. But I mean, also, I think both of us know that the reality usually is not that easy. someone, there's a lot left to the

Sara Hicks (14:08) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (14:09) So why do the work?

Sara Hicks (14:11) Yeah, I mean, I think the key word that you just said there is interpretation, which you want to avoid. want to, you know, I think like we keep hearing about culture fit and, know, the culture fit conversation or the culture fit discussion. And I think that culture without the having values defined is open to interpretation. And so that is something to be avoided.

we want to avoid having these assumptions and certainly based on any false assumptions and the more you could be like a word that we obviously love because it's in our book and in our company but the more we're to intentional about defining some of these and really have them not just defined in a notion or on a wall but like defined

way that it's been useful in terms of how you hire and how you offer feedback it's useful, right? They've become part

Mathias Meyer (15:05) Uh-uh.

Sara Hicks (15:06) of the way decisions are made and feedback is given and it helps to scale, right? I think one of the key things I started to learn is like, like I don't have to be in every decision. you know, as the founder, as the leader. These are part of the

artifacts within the company that can help the managers and the team, you know, be more autonomous.

Mathias Meyer (15:28) Yeah. Yeah. I think that was one of the other outcomes for me and my coach in that conversation. It is the element of scale providing a set of almost like boundaries on what is acceptable behavior and what isn't, you know, and what isn't, isn't always an easy thing to determine from values unless you're very specific about it. But I mean, there's the thing where

values, you know, if you make them too abstract and too broad, they probably won't be useful because they leave, they still leave a lot to the imagination.

But if you make them too specific, then you might, you know, box yourself in too much. So there's always, and again, there's a tension where all of this takes time. I do like the culture fit part because I mean, in my, even in my founder career and executive career,

I've been thinking about that a lot and even I mean that it comes up with clients all the time where the culture fit is still dropped in and you know try to uncover what does that actually mean culture fit right and as you said like when it's not explicit when there's you know a heavy post work drinking culture in a company and somebody

you who's applying for a job isn't coming along or in their probationary period. They're not, you know, going out with the team as much and that is, you know, that is counted against them.

Sara Hicks (17:00) Yeah. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (17:03) That is culture. But it's probably not written

Sara Hicks (17:06) Thank

Mathias Meyer (17:07) down unless you know it might some companies might actually be explicit about it. And I mean, if that is, you know what you expect from people.

You might need to go through the slightly embarrassing step of actually manifesting that in whatever way, because that seems only fair. I wrote a blog post about this many, many years ago about how hiring for is the wrong approach. I remember reading a comment somewhere where somebody said, this is probably from a

disgruntled person who was applying for a job

and didn't get it. It's

Sara Hicks (17:45) that group.

Mathias Meyer (17:48) like, huh, interesting perspective, but I could see, I could see how it might come across like that. But

Sara Hicks (17:54) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (17:55) also weird, weird perspective that way. But anyway, I think we, I mean, we mentioned the word culture actually a few times. What is that to you?

Sara Hicks (18:04) And I think culture is also desired behaviors. that the company behaves and makes decisions and and ultimately delivers on its vision and on its goals. also action, right? It's a contract.

Mathias Meyer (18:22) Hmm

Sara Hicks (18:24) how we act, how we go from A to B, we hire, how we provide feedback, how we deliver to our customers, we operate. in many ways like values, they're connected, Like you have to

Mathias Meyer (18:39) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (18:40) very intentional about defining the value, so, cause that will define your culture.

So that's, and I've gotten it wrong.

Mathias Meyer (18:48) Yeah, I mean, agree.

Sara Hicks (18:50) mean, the same, same thing, you know, definitely gotten it wrong. Didn't, you know, had performative culture, performative values. know, had to kind of learn, learn the hard way, right? Of what these really

Mathias Meyer (19:01) Yeah,

Sara Hicks (19:02) meant. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (19:03) it's a process. I think in our book, we have a chapter on communication, actually, we we had this realization that all of communication that you can have, I think we're talking about how feedback is given, how...

how you find out whether you're doing a good job or not, how decisions are made, as you said, bad news are communicated, those things. We sum all of that up in our communication chapter. And I think in the opening paragraph, or in one of the first paragraphs, we talk about how communication is the fabric of culture, right? How.

Culture really boils down to how you communicate and that in turn boils down to all of those things I just said and how we collaborate, how we are with each other, whether we yell at each other or whether we

Sara Hicks (19:56) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (19:57) are maybe even too nice to each other. That can also be a thing. Like we're not tackling the hard, the difficult things

Sara Hicks (20:02) Thank you.

Mathias Meyer (20:04) because we're conflict-avoidant.

Sara Hicks (20:06) Yep, yep, no, it's a really.

Mathias Meyer (20:07) And oddly

enough, communication is a value that some companies have. What is this? I don't know what that means.

Sara Hicks (20:19) They probably don't either would be my guess. Yes. Yes.

Mathias Meyer (20:24) That is true. mean, speaking of, you know, as performative values and values that are too broad, there's so many examples of this in the wild. do remember when I did my first research on values, when I then started to create the first set of values for my company back then, I came across all of these and it is it is tempting to write them down.

Sara Hicks (20:51) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (20:51) because

again, like they sound so nice But then they're just too broad. what, you know, I think for me, the first one I can think about, when I look at, think about values that are performative or too broad or meaningless is trust.

Sara Hicks (21:14) Yes.

Mathias Meyer (21:14) Because

trust isn't something that you can just say we have. You can't just say

Sara Hicks (21:20) you

Mathias Meyer (21:21) we trust each other or as some companies talk about the trust bucket that is full by default but gets emptied out over time if things erode trust. Trust is one of them for It sounds great. It sounds like something that you should have.

Sara Hicks (21:42) It sounds important. It sounds important.

Mathias Meyer (21:42) What it sounds important it but then again you don't even

stand out when you put trust on your list of values because everybody has it on there like what's what's a value like that for you

Sara Hicks (21:54) Well, definitely the next one that you had on your list, was also one that I had a strong reaction to, which is integrity. And I put this as a comment in our notes, but one of my favorite lines about integrity as a value, I don't know where it came from. Someone must have said, integrity isn't a value, it's a legal requirement. Which I think is just

Mathias Meyer (22:17) huh. That is nice.

Sara Hicks (22:20) one of my favorite lines.

it's just it's not really a value and I think one of the things we should point out here these values on its own these one single words Aren't so helpful. Like I I

Mathias Meyer (22:32) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (22:32) encourage all my clients to have and we've done this for ourselves Like each of our values has a few sentences next to it and kind of

Mathias Meyer (22:41) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (22:42) describes like okay. What does it mean? Like like we actually have people

as one of our values that defines our partnership and the company. But it doesn't just say people, like I'm gonna read it right now. says clients, us, family, friends over revenue. So

Mathias Meyer (22:58) Mmm.

Sara Hicks (22:59) when it comes down to making a call, we default to doing what's right by our clients, by ourselves and our family and friends rather than optimizing for our financial or reputational gain. Now, people, if you just saw on a, you know,

on a notion or somewhere that our value is people, you'd be like, sure, they value people, their coaches, what, you know, but then you read the

Mathias Meyer (23:21) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (23:21) next sentence or two and you're like, you really get a sense of what that means to us and how we might use that in our decisions. So that's, that's one that I actually like, think is helpful. If people is not a helpful value, but people with some, some information around what that means for you is helpful.

Mathias Meyer (23:40) Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's a nice thing that you brought up our values, because I mean, I do sometimes ascend our values, not as shining, glorious examples of what are great values, but these are ours. This is what we think is useful. And I do this for my personal values as well, when I work through clients with that. And I definitely agree, like a value.

One word values are necessarily a bad thing, only when you leave it with the word or with just add more words that leave things even more ambiguous. think,

Sara Hicks (24:16) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (24:19) like, think about trust specifically, and I have another one that is a personal pet peeve of mine, which is happiness. Because these are, these both of them describe an end state.

Also, that is deeply personal. They describe

Sara Hicks (24:39) Yes.

Mathias Meyer (24:40) an end state that you as the company do not control and you might have some influence into it. If it's an environment where everybody does trust each other, that's great. That's a nice work environment. When you have an environment where everybody is happy, that's nice.

happiness in itself, like if that is your value and people will start arguing, like I'm not, I don't want to do that because that doesn't make me happy.

it's, it's not useful, right? And happiness, how, how happy I am, depends on so many factors that aren't all company related. Like there might be something personal going on. I might be in a difficult stage in my life.

you know, there's, all kinds of things that could happen that influence my, my own happiness. And I mean, it fluctuates. Not just be made throughout the week, even not just the month, the year,

Sara Hicks (25:42) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (25:43) you know, in Germany in particular, it might be the winter season, which is especially difficult for people,

Sara Hicks (25:50) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (25:50) recording this at five in the afternoon, my time. And it's, it's, it's dark outside. Can't blame people for being happy there. And trust is the same, like where.

People say they want trust, but how do you get trust? Like you get trust when people are open and honest and candid with each other,

transparency in some way. I transparency is also one of those great sounding values, but if you break down transparency into, know, we don't hold back without being, for example, without being hurtful.

We don't hold back, but are still kind as we voice our feedback or our thoughts, for example. Sometimes

Sara Hicks (26:30) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (26:30) difficult for me as a German. Then trust is a result of that. If you focus on what you want those discussions to look like, ideally you get trust in the end, but you can't just dictate, I trust my boss, my boss is supposed to trust me.

If my boss basically does things that harm me or my career my progression in the company Or is not giving me support like that erodes trust right or when

Sara Hicks (27:01) Yep. Yep.

Mathias Meyer (27:03) they're coming to me Or when we say we have you know performance review season comes around as it does for many folks like every six or twelve month and they're talking to me about something that I did nine months ago

And this is the first time I'm hearing about it. Like this is, you know, that is not

a trusting

Sara Hicks (27:21) Right.

Mathias Meyer (27:21) relationship. That is, that's pretty awful because now I can't do anything about this.

Sara Hicks (27:27) Right, Yeah, I'm really glad that you brought culture into the conversation around values, because values are absolutely cultural, right? Like, I mean, you just brought up the example of it's five o'clock in Germany, it's dark out, it's winter. there's so much these things like, you know, being happy as a value.

Well, that might mean not having debate or not bringing up any conflict. And conflict avoidance is

Mathias Meyer (27:58) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (27:59) very challenging for companies. But you have to be happy. so these are just not differentiating. And they aren't taking into account people's lived experience of what's going on in their lives, might be going on in their lives.

And those are outcomes rather than actual

values. You want to get to a place where you have high trust in your organization, but you can't just say, OK, trust. You have to build towards it. Yeah, really good points.

Mathias Meyer (28:32) I think the other thing about happiness that just came to mind, I mean, and I think this is a problem with values in general, is when, you know, bad things happen. That mean like,

Sara Hicks (28:43) Yes.

Mathias Meyer (28:43) how do you balance happiness with layoffs, for example? Like,

Sara Hicks (28:47) Right.

Mathias Meyer (28:48) are you not going to do the layoffs because happiness is a value? there's probably a reason you have to do the layoffs. Maybe it's a financial reason or some other reason.

whether it's a good reason or not is besides the point, but is happiness then the reason where someone from the executive team is gonna say, no, we can't do that. That's gonna make people unhappy. And it definitely will. I mean,

Sara Hicks (29:06) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (29:10) that's for sure. We have something here that I think you added about like how values are something that you tolerate and reward, which are really like,

Sara Hicks (29:22) Yeah, that's one of

the best definition I've ever seen or kind of and I keep going back to it's like values are what you tolerate and what you reward. And so, you know, the best example I can think of to define that is like if you tolerate people, you know, working on the weekends or late at night or, you know, interruptions through the weekend or on vacations or sick leave, you probably aren't living up to a value of

having balance or valuing people or valuing kind of that work-life balance value. And you see that all the time. Like if you're allowing those behaviors to happen and there are ways to help coach your teams, we've had to do it, to really unplug and take vacations, then you're

Mathias Meyer (30:12) yeah.

Sara Hicks (30:13) tolerating that and it's not a value. You're actually rewarding that.

you can almost go to like someone who's newly hired and ask them after a month what the values are. Cause they'll know, they'll know it's being tolerated. They'll know it's being rewarded. they see it. They feel it in their teams and kind of where they're working. I don't know. just, I just love that as a definition cause it's

You want your values to be what you are rewarding and

Mathias Meyer (30:41) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (30:42) what you are tolerating. But often it's the, like you're not living up to your values. You're tolerating these decisions or these ways. Or maybe your values aren't differentiated enough. They're just kind of table stakes. And you have to kind of go back and be like, that's, quality's not a value. we all of course want to.

produce high quality and quality work, what could make that a more specific value that's useful that you can actually use as a decision-making guide? Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (31:13) Yeah,

I love the tolerate part. I do remember speaking of like work-life balance specifically situation where somebody who was reporting to me kept checking in while they were on vacation. you know, there's also something that seems almost innocent where people share pictures from vacation in the company slack as they're on vacation.

But like in those situations, really went to people and said, you know, you're not actually supposed to be here. If I see you again, I'm going to disable your Slack account. And all of that sounds harsh, but the, were things that I wouldn't tolerate. And there was a different culture thing, like,

Sara Hicks (31:56) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (31:56) you know, the U S work culture versus for example,

like German work

Sara Hicks (32:00) Europe.

Mathias Meyer (32:01) culture involved here as well, maybe that's gotten harder, like, to disconnect because work can now be on everybody's devices. But, when you were in Berlin, we had actually written out the, vacation policy and maybe we'd also worked on values. I do believe we did, but yeah.

Sara Hicks (32:20) I think we did. I think we did. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (32:22) At that same time, we were on a boat in Berlin as we were drafting our vacation policy. And following that, we started being serious about it. it took people on the team to get used to that, there's no... Shifting behaviors is not a thing that you do easily, especially when something is so ingrained.

but it's like, hey, you checked out to be on vacation with your family. Please do that. I don't want to see you again.

Sara Hicks (32:53) Yeah.

yeah, the thing that I think that that comes up is, values without some of these conversations or some of these check ins or, I don't want to use the word enforcement, but values without some sort way to check in on them can't.

create all these problems like it will create the eye rolls, will create the cynicism, it will create distrust. So just be like more values that are performative and sitting on the wall. So you kind of have to have the conversation about folks who are, unnecessarily checking in from sick leave or from vacations or from, you know, late nights or weekends and, and try to understand, hey, what's going on? Like what, what's happening here? Like

Are there issues that I'm not aware of as a leader around workload and work balance? Is this a personal, you know, issue? it cultural? Like what are the things here? You know, know I've, I've had to make decisions around, know, were working on a big, big, you know, enterprise customer launch and was getting down to the wire and the team was already pushing really hard. I knew it, you know, like we were all just really trying to get to this deadline. And there came this decision that

rolled up to me of like, hey, I think we need to ask the team to work this weekend. And I looked at it and I was no, we not afraid to say when we do need to really push through and go a little bit extra. But in this particular case, was like,

You can't ask them to do this and then next weekend it's the same and the next weekend it's you see that time and time again where it's like, this person shouldn't take vacation because of this launch. You're like,

what someone's just gonna keep delaying their vacation or keep working every single weekend. It's like that's not a sustainable culture and if you're tolerating

Mathias Meyer (34:29) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (34:30) that and you're rewarding that and you're rewarding the people who are doing heroics time and time again, which I've seen. You've seen the people who are just rewarded for going above and beyond all the time and it leads to burnout.

leads to burnout.

Mathias Meyer (34:45) Yeah.

I think this is a good example for when values are useful.

and also when they create tension, right? When somebody reads an ideal state into the values or it turns out they don't actually believe in the values of the organization. They have a different set. They're optimizing for something that aren't those values,

which to me are always warning signs in a way.

and is just really where challenges arise. And I think you know, values are still meaningful and useful in those situations,

you know, you find out somebody is on a different path than the organization is like there's a constant conflict.

somebody's personal values or how they see the world and what the company really the culture to be. Like one example I've come back to time and again is when there's somebody who's who's doing really well in their like technically or in terms of knowledge and experience but isn't doing well.

say in collaborating and communicating with people and sharing knowledge with other people. They're building a silo. they resist any, attempt to hand off responsibility, which they probably usually accumulated over years, probably

Sara Hicks (36:19) Right.

Mathias Meyer (36:20) worked in the organization for a while. I think

The catch-all term for that, especially on the engineering side, because come across it time and again, is a brilliant asshole. And maybe there's a nicer term for this or a kinder one, but it's very common. Like those people have been with the organization for a while, and some clients I've had have really struggled to find ways to...

Sara Hicks (36:36) .

Mathias Meyer (36:48) manage those people in quotes, like whatever that means. Like the first thought always goes to, well, I could just move them to a different team. I could just isolate them in their own team or do all kinds of things to shield, well, not that person, but yourself from

Sara Hicks (37:05) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (37:06) potentially making a difficult decision. And I think a situation like that is where values can really shine.

Sara Hicks (37:14) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (37:14) Because

they need to be written down. can't be a culture that is based on assumptions or just what people think or believe to be true. Ideally, they're written down values. And sometimes you actually need to go through the work and then write those down.

Sara Hicks (37:33) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (37:34) Because then, because suddenly it becomes crystal clear, this person might not actually belong here. All

Sara Hicks (37:41) Yes.

Mathias Meyer (37:42) of those fears...

the fear of the fallout, which is usually the biggest fear that people have of moving a person like that out of the organization. That fear is what keeps them from doing the thing that probably needs to be done. But when you actually

Sara Hicks (37:58) Great.

Mathias Meyer (38:00) have the values and compare if and how that person lives up to them, or likely not, it's just

Sara Hicks (38:08) Right.

Mathias Meyer (38:09) like the conversation becomes easily grounded.

Like there's, you know, there's probably still arguments, but at least there's a baseline.

there's a set of behaviors we want to see. By extension, there's a set of behaviors we don't want to see, and you're not living up to many or all of these. And either you're

Sara Hicks (38:28) Yep. Yep.

Mathias Meyer (38:29) going to change that or we'll find you a new role somewhere

Sara Hicks (38:34) Right, right. Yeah, I think

Mathias Meyer (38:36) I know, it's-

Sara Hicks (38:37) that's the thing is like the value should be able to help guide some of these conversations. They should be a framework making some of these decisions and influencing some of these decisions and giving some sort of baseline like you talked about some sort of grounding. Like, we work with this type of customer or not? Do we?

take the product in this direction, this team member right team member for what we need at this point? All these types of decisions are really challenging, but to have something to use as a baseline and to talk about through the tensions, because none of these are just easy yes, no, they're like, okay, what are the trade-offs?

Let's make a list. It's like, what were the good? What makes sense? What doesn't make sense? Let's talk through it and then ultimately use that to make the decision. So then it's not arbitrary. And these things are stated. There's hopefully opportunity for surprises because you can really go back to using these values and identifying them and talking about them when having these conversations. It helps just to make

to make these trade-offs, which are inherently challenging because they involve people, right?

Mathias Meyer (39:53) Yeah, I have like a few memories of situations like that. like speaking of types of customer. know, one question that I've come across in my time is do we we sell to companies that in turn sell products to governments or you know, defense contractors or things like that?

And I will tell you that is one that like any set of values won't just give you an easy answer to. That's a discussion and exploration. And if you don't do that, like do you sell to someone who themselves sells to customers who then sell to defense companies, as one example, There is a point where

you become very concrete on an unacceptable behavior or the way of doing things. And it's situations like that. Another thing I could think about is like, do you use a supplier or buy from a company that, you know, supports a certain political party or person or,

certain levels

of policy. And I mean, as a business, like you, the value that is still always there that is unwritten that is table stakes is we have to make money. Otherwise, we can't actually pay the bill, we can't say no to everything.

Sara Hicks (41:17) We are a business.

Mathias Meyer (41:19) We're a business like if we don't have like at least an equal amount of money or more in our bank account at the end of the day or month.

It's going to be difficult to pay our bills. I have no answer to how to resolve those kinds of situations because it's not an easy one. This is where people start projecting their own values or what they believe the company should be or stand for.

discussions can become quite heated and emotional because it comes down to personal values rather than the values of the company But it is like part of those tough decisions where values they may or may not be helpful or when they actually go down the crapper.

Like when a company,

Sara Hicks (42:01) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (42:04) starts to just do mass layoffs, like is that a thing that you can equate with a value that focuses on people or happiness or whatever, right? Just,

Sara Hicks (42:13) Yeah. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (42:14) you can probably tie it back to the unspoken

business value of making money or increasing profits or shareholder value.

Sara Hicks (42:25) Great.

Mathias Meyer (42:25) But I mean, that's one of the situations where I found like values just tend to break down. And sometimes there's

Sara Hicks (42:31) Yes.

Mathias Meyer (42:31) a good reason for it. Sometimes it's just, It is just a performative value that we have here. And it doesn't actually mean anything.

Sara Hicks (42:37) Yep. Yeah, it's one of those. Yeah,

one of those like transparency as a value, which is actually very admirable to have a transparent

Mathias Meyer (42:45) Hmm

Sara Hicks (42:46) culture and to try to be as transparent as possible. People hear transparent and they're like expected to have full visibility into everything at all times. And,

For certain companies, especially public companies, they're not able to because of the markets and because of insider trading. there's all sorts of nuance. When there's bad news or layoffs or raises, everyone values transparency until you get to that. I talked about, everyone values work-life balance, but then you look at what they're rewarding and they're celebrating teams that have gone above and beyond to

to get something done. And again, these are tensions, right? When there are tough decisions that we have to make for the future of the company or the direction of the company or the stability of the company, value should help us and we should strive towards being true and have a framework towards our values. That's great. Ask yourself, when...

When did we say no recently because of a value? And how did

Mathias Meyer (43:49) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (43:50) that help us? Just check in with yourself or with your leadership Values can quickly go to cynicism and to distrust if you're not really looking at, okay, how are we talking about this? What are we rewarding? What are we tolerating? What behavior does get rewarded here? And is there a value that aligns to that?

I'm sorry to use the word aligns.

Mathias Meyer (44:15) It's okay. mean, alignment is

probably a value of some company somewhere. I

Sara Hicks (44:21) Somewhere, somewhere.

Mathias Meyer (44:23) do wonder if cynicism and distrust have ever been used as company values. They've probably been used to describe company culture, but maybe

Sara Hicks (44:33) Yeah, yeah.

Mathias Meyer (44:34) not written on walls.

Sara Hicks (44:35) There's a value that we've talked about, I think it's even one of our values, which is candor, right? Being open and honest and timely and direct is important, but it doesn't mean you can be a jerk, right? So sometimes

Mathias Meyer (44:49) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (44:50) candor is taken to this like, I'm radically candid and I'm just telling the harsh truth. Like, well, you're being a jerk. Now, is

Mathias Meyer (44:57) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (44:57) that okay? So we actually have in parentheses.

Direct but kind in our communication.

Mathias Meyer (45:02) you

Sara Hicks (45:04) We don't let things simmer for longer than 24 hours before checking in with each other or chatting face to face. Should either of us feel that something's off? Like candor's okay, but on its own, it can be interpreted that someone can be like a jerk. And is

Mathias Meyer (45:19) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (45:20) that what you want? Is that the behavior you want? This radical, candid, like in your face?

No, I don't think so. think you want open, honest, direct, but also respectful conversations.

Mathias Meyer (45:35) Mmm. Yeah, Radical Candor has probably been on the values list of quite a few companies for the last 10 years ever since that emerged emerged as a thing in business.

Sara Hicks (45:45) Yup.

Mathias Meyer (45:46) I think there's something about like in a difficult situation or where things happen, that, know, are unforeseen. Like you have to do layoffs, it might just happen at some point, or you need to really, you need to shift markets or change the business or, mean, shut the business down. what, values can still do.

is they can still guide how you go through the motions. Right? You can do

Sara Hicks (46:10) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (46:10) the layoffs through by an up in the air movie kind of situation where you hire an external consultant to do all the dirty work for you. But you can also decide like you say our values ask us to do this. Like how can we do this in

the most humane way possible,

Sara Hicks (46:32) Right.

Mathias Meyer (46:33) if such a thing is possible with layoffs, at least, know,

whatever levels of empathy, transparency, candor, all of those things, whatever are possible to a legal level and without getting you into trouble as a company, it's still worth having that conversation. I've found that to be

Sara Hicks (46:54) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (46:54) true for us as we were in a tough spot.

And I think there's still values are useful on a meta level as well, like not just thinking about

Sara Hicks (47:05) Thank you.

Mathias Meyer (47:05) like individual behaviors or actual process of making decision, but you, they allow you to think about even the, like the, how we make decisions itself, like on a slightly

Sara Hicks (47:16) Great.

Mathias Meyer (47:17) more abstract level. Do we want to be collaborative in our decision making? Do we?

Do we have a consensus kind of approach here in this company? Are they allow

Sara Hicks (47:26) Right.

Mathias Meyer (47:26) you to do that? And I think, uh, and this is where it's like useful to be somewhat specific in how you even describe transparency as a value if you so choose or radical

Sara Hicks (47:36) .

Mathias Meyer (47:38) candor, because then even in a tough spot, it is something that grounds you that you

Sara Hicks (47:41) Thank you.

Mathias Meyer (47:44) can go back to and say, okay, this is a shitty process. This is going to be awful for everybody.

But how can we still be as true to our values as possible

Sara Hicks (47:51) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (47:55) in going through this? And that might mean, say, in doing layoffs, might set up a spreadsheet and actively help people find new roles that you need to lay off. Or how you communicate those things.

all of that can still be determined by company values. I'm, you know, we don't have to be too rosy about it, but there's still situations, even in these tough spots where

There is a potential for your values to go to be meaningless, to go completely to crap. But maybe they can still guide how you go about that process.

Sara Hicks (48:29) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (48:30) I know there's still a whole conversation to be had about how we can, what the processes of finding values, but talked about how some of that came to be for us. And I think maybe the thing we do is include in this, in the show notes, the worksheet we have for this particular exercise.

I think that's than us describing the process because in a way, we were to sum it up, is write down behaviors that you want to see, that you believe to be existing in the company and then write down behaviors that you aspire for the company

Sara Hicks (49:03) that.

Mathias Meyer (49:04) to be. Ideally, it's always a mix of those things, like realistic

Sara Hicks (49:09) That was a good one.

Mathias Meyer (49:10) grounding and something where...

This is what I think or we think would be more useful, more productive, or reflects the culture I would like to be. And then,

Sara Hicks (49:20) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (49:25) I think regular conversations about, you on that path? I think the challenging stuff about values is always like, now we have them, let's put them up on walls.

Sara Hicks (49:36) Yeah

Mathias Meyer (49:37) And then you never talk about them again.

Sara Hicks (49:41) Yep. Yeah, I think that's the

important part is how do you operationalize them and really think about what you're gonna do once you've gone through the exercise of creating some values, especially after you initially create them. Have an intentional checkpoint at 30 days or 90 days and go through okay, how does this feel?

Mathias Meyer (50:00) Bye.

Sara Hicks (50:01) Is this working? Are these actually useful? How can we make them more useful? How can we make them part of?

our leadership meeting or our all hands or the offsite

or how can we bring them into more of our decisions? And I think it's okay that values, especially after, know, in that initial period, call it whatever 30, 90 days, that you can kind of have permission to adjust them and to, make sure that they're the values that make sense for where your company is. And then

Each year, I would say do another review,

and actually talk different folks on the team, folks who have been there for a while, new folks, try to understand their experience with the values?

Mathias Meyer (50:46) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (50:47) What do they think is being tolerated or rewarded in those terms? And then adjust, yeah, then adjust.

Mathias Meyer (50:52) I do like that part. Yeah. Yeah. That's really nice.

keeping the values like on people's minds is an additional challenge here. And not just to always remind them like the writings on the wall, yelling at people, but rather putting focus on what do we need to do to be, to live this value?

more than we do now. I had something where every quarter we picked a value and then figured out like two or three initiatives that could help us improve towards that value. What I don't

Sara Hicks (51:28) Yep. One thing we did

also is, I think it was monthly or quarterly, we also highlighted an example of where a team or an individual or decision was a good example of a value coming into the forefront. And that's a little tricky because again, be careful what you're rewarding.

Mathias Meyer (51:50) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (51:51) But I think it is a healthy exercise to

Mathias Meyer (51:53) you

Sara Hicks (51:54) on a regular basis highlight.

you know, how the values are like lived, being displayed within teams and individuals.

Mathias Meyer (52:03) Yeah, agreed. The one thing I don't really like is using values and performance reviews, but maybe that's an entirely different Pandora's box that we open in a...

Sara Hicks (52:13) Well, we should

probably have an episode just on performance reviews.

Mathias Meyer (52:18) probably. I have so many thoughts and

opinions on performance reviews. Anyway, we should. So

Sara Hicks (52:22) Yes.

Mathias Meyer (52:24) we'll leave it at that with values.

Sara Hicks (52:27) Great.

Mathias Meyer (52:28) And Sara, do you have anything fun to

share outside of this very serious business topic that we just discussed?

Sara Hicks (52:37) Let's see, what came to mind, you know, as we wrap up is, you know, we both enjoy cooking and I just want to give a shout out to the very simple but always so satisfying quesadilla, which I had last night.

Mathias Meyer (52:56) Anything that has melted cheese on it is just a win.

Sara Hicks (52:57) I

was solo last night and I sauteed up some onion and bell pepper and I had some black beans and then two kinds of cheeses and it was just...

Mathias Meyer (53:12) What it? Which cheese? What cheeses?

Sara Hicks (53:15) let's see. went with a white cheddar and then I just did a simple Monterey Jack. Just a simple, very, very subtle...

it just, it's so easy. It's quick.

I'm just going to say highly recommend quesadilla night if you haven't had one in a while.

Mathias Meyer (53:37) Yeah,

I need to... I haven't had one in a while, so it's probably gonna

Sara Hicks (53:40) There you go.

Mathias Meyer (53:41) happen.

For me, I've

Sara Hicks (53:42) How about you? How about you? What's your fun? What's your fun story?

Mathias Meyer (53:47) been thinking about whether it's fun, but I've been watching the studio, that show with and partially by Seth Rogen on Apple TV. And deserves all the praise and awards that it's gotten.

It's just done really well, shot really well.

and also very funny, it's like every episode highlights something

related to leadership and management. you know, sometimes coming from a place or maybe all the time coming from a place of the insecurities that you can bring into that role when it's your first time carrying that.

I will say at times it got a little bit too close. I had to stop watching for a day or two just to process it. But there are some good nuggets there.

thankfully it's a different industry as you know, so it's, which helps, but it's also a nice reminder that whatever the industry is, the leadership and management challenges are always the same.

Sara Hicks (54:53) I always feel that in coaching because clients come to me and they're like, well, I don't really have experience in let's say health tech. And I'm like,

Mathias Meyer (55:02) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (55:03) same problems there. Won't be any different.

Mathias Meyer (55:04) Yeah, won't change won't be any different. But yes, I mean, yeah.

as you like to say, problems are people problems. It

Sara Hicks (55:13) Yep. Yep.

Mathias Meyer (55:15) doesn't matter what the industry is. And on that bombshell, we're going to close this

Sara Hicks (55:17) True, There we go. There we go.

Mathias Meyer (55:22) out.