Build Your Business: Using Company Values to Drive Success [New Skillshare Class]

Key Takeaways

so when you've got your new set of values how do you keep them from becoming something you put on a wall and never think about in this lesson we'll talk about how to live with them and work with them everyday and make sure they're relevant in your work and in your life for us at buffer values are something that are talked about every single day in one way or another whether we are making the decision to launch a new feature or plan a new feature whether we are trying to provide more value to our customers and our audience through our marketing efforts whether we're choosing what content to share on Facebook or Twitter always in the back of our minds is what this means from the lens of our values are we showing gratitude are we sharing our process transparently are we creating an environment that is positive that highlights the good of social media so they're really key in all the decisions that we make every day for example at buffer our value of default to transparency let us down a very interesting path when it comes to salary transparency we first decided to make salaries transparent within our team internally and that process went pretty well there are a lot of questions that we needed to answer a lot of tough conversations that we needed to have to make sure everyone felt comfortable with the process but we did have a value that guided us to fall to transparency which means unless there's a reason not to we share it and we felt that the reasons not to weren't as strong as the reasons to do it so after the decision was made to share salaries internally we took it even further we said what would it look like if we shared our salaries with the world what if we made this information public we tried to think through the pros and the cons the challenges and the benefits of this process and we ended up making the decision that it did make sense to share our salaries with the world and as a result you can now go to buffer salary calculator and find out exactly what you would make if you were part of the buffer team and in any specific role that you might want to play a buffer our values also guide us when we are planning outside events or when we are attending events so what we've done in that in those cases is to create a code of conduct that guides us and this is something that I would recommend to any company that is working together or working with the public and it basically says this is what we expect from teammates and this is what we can't tolerate these are the behaviors that we stand for and these are the behaviors that are not okay with us it's always been better in our experience to make it explicit you may think you'll never have a situation where you'll have to give a teammate feedback about this particular element or a microaggression or something that felt like harassment you may think that you're entirely unified and like how you see things how you communicate together but just having that written down having that deliberate aspect of it is a protection and a little bit of a security feature for anyone on the team so in case we were to ever have to use this document or ever have to like pull up those resources it's been handled it's already been something that we've thought about and been deliberate about as far as viewing it through the lens of our values so there is that protection and there is that recourse in the case we would ever need it another example of that I really admire and a lot of us at buffer admire is Patagonia of course they have a value of environmentalism of conservation and famously a few black Fridays ago launched a really big ad don't buy this jacket so obviously that's gonna catch a lot of attention in a newspaper or a magazine and the idea behind it was to talk about consumer culture to talk about whether we actually need to buy all the things that we're buying or whether we could get by with with fewer things and that's so radical for a company that is designed to sell things basically but for them to live up to their values that was the sort of a parent move for them that was what they needed to do to be true to their values and to who they are and you know when you take a radical stance like that when you do something that is a little bit uncomfortable a little bit out of your comfort zone books are gonna follow you there they're gonna feel the passion they're gonna feel that you're going out on a limb for what you believe in and that really resonates with people it also has a big impact on the hiring front as well so an example I really love is from Zappos they've got a huge focus on customer service customer support customer gratitude and when they bring new people on they go through a long training program specifically focused on values and making sure the folks feel like they are a strong fit was at BOCES values so much so that if the end of their training program arrives and they don't feel aligned with the values they don't feel like those are something that they can work with and live with day to day Zappos pays them to quit thousands of dollars to quit to say this isn't the right fit for me values are also gonna be immensely useful when challenges come up in your business and your company you're gonna help you find your way through those moments using what you already know about who you are and who you want to be in the world for example at buffer we had to make a really tough decision around a feature that we had that was based on our our values and we made the tough decision to to get rid of that feature it was something that customers really loved but we couldn't support it and feel in line with our values what it was was called suggestions and basically we would scour the internet for things that folks might want to share on social media and we would have this in a queue for them to be able to share at any time so content on different types of topics inspiration business leadership available for them whenever they wanted to share it great idea folks really enjoyed it the the problem came when it felt like we were encouraging sharing content without being part of the conversation about content so when you make it so easy that folks can share something without reading it or share something without even having any sort of knowledge of what it is what the what the words are within the content it's really tough to say that you have a value of listening as a company if that is a feature that you're putting out into the world and it was so easy and folks really loved it it really keeps your social media queues brimming with with pretty good content because we chose it ourselves however it just didn't work with our values we couldn't say this is who we are and this is what we stand for and how we make decisions and have that feature spamming people basically for lack of a better word so it was a case of making a tough call basing it on our values we still you know don't know if it's the right decision for the bottom line we know that it was the right decision for our values and for who we are and how we want to act as a company so it's tricky here is that you can view this from a lens of us as buffer the company doing a little bit of pushing our values onto other people so where do you draw that line between here's who we are and here's what we stand for but also we can meet you where you are in the world not every customer has to agree with the buffer value is like not everyone has to sign on for that experience we know it's very unique and very particular to us the deciding factor here was that the features we put out into the world are who we are they're all that we really have to stand on as far as this is who before is this is what buffer does and we couldn't in good conscience feel comfortable with being part of an environment that was contributing in any way to folks you know sharing content that they hadn't read to folks spamming their social media followers with with content that may not really be like who they were who what they felt aligned with so while there are a lot of people who I'm sure use that feature very responsibly and in a great way we couldn't stand behind it as a company and put that out into the world with the buffer name on it and feel like we were living up to our own values so these were just a few examples of how you might find yourself living your values on a day to day basis from the lake very ordinary and every day two more major sort of campaigns and momentous moments in a company the main thing to remember here is that what's important is living with them evolving them making sure that you discuss them and think about them keep them real keep them part of the fabric of your day-to-day life and the decisions you make and that's going to keep them strong and something that will truly guide you in our final lesson we'll talk about sharing your values whether you choose to share them just within your team or with the world at large this is a really important step of explaining who you are and how you want to operate as a company