What Percentage of Themselves Do Your Employees Leave Outside?
Creating an environment where employees can bring their whole selves to work.
It is not possible for a person, whose values are not aligned with the company's, to deliver ultra high performance.
An interview with Adam Bird, founder and CEO of Cronofy.
"Find people who share your values, and you will conquer the world together." — John Ratzenberger
Belonging is a fundamental requirement of the human condition. We need to belong in order to create a sense of reality and to find meaning in what we do. A new team member's values must align with the company's values, in order for them to be able to become a fully-fledged member of the team and thereby fulfilling their need to belong.
Your employees have one of two choices every time they enter your office:
- If their values are aligned with the company's values, they can be themselves, be part of the team and apply 100% of themselves to your company's challenges, with creativity, commitment and enthusiasm.
- If their values do not align with the company's values they have to leave the values that are misaligned outside the office. If there is a misalignment your employees leave that percentage, whether it is 10%, 25%, 30%... of themselves, and their capacity to be fully engaged in your business, outside the office.
When they do enter the office they come in with a façade that attempts to make up for that missing percentage and the problem with a facade is it is not natural and it takes effort to keep the mask from slipping.
This is essential to keep in mind for your interview process: if you do not know what your company values are, you cannot possibly evaluate the values of the candidates you interview, and you will not know if the people you eventually hire are operating at 70% capacity behind a façade.
What have you done at Cronofy to define your company values?
We started to think about our culture and values earlier this year. Our first hires were all within the Cronofy team's network. Before we hired outside of our network I wanted to be sure that we had captured the values of this early team.
We started our values clarification with a session by Gabbi Cahane of Multiple, one of our early investors, and defined three main tenets of operation for the business:
- Pragmatism
- Pioneering
- Empowering ourselves and others
We did not do the values and culture definition early at my previous company Esendex and the business really suffered because of it. This feels like we are preparing the business in the right way for the future.
