Our Core Company Values: The Results Are In

By Chuck Gault, Max Coating President

It had been about a year since the management team and I had got together to establish our core company values.

As you remember from the previous post, we came up with:

1. Honesty
2. Respect
3. Empowered Team Members
4. Continuous Improvement

After this time had gone by, I began wondering how the rest of the company felt about those values.  I honestly wasn’t sure if they even remembered them. That’s when I nervously gathered everyone into a room together. I told them, “Ok, we came up with these four values a year ago. Now grade us.”

I wanted our employees to grade us on how well we were implementing these core values throughout our workday. I didn’t know if I was ready to hear the results or not. Had we remembered to go by our core values, or did they go out the door the day we made them? Being our own worst critic, I honestly feared the worst thinking we’d get 4s and 5s. And with surveys, that’s not good.  Typically, 8 and above you are fine, 7 you are on the fence, and 6 or below means you’re in trouble.

So I asked everyone to go around the room one by one and grade us on our implementation of our core values. As it turns out, I was pleasantly surprised. We got lots of 9s and 10s. Though we did get the occasional 7, we used that as a discussion point. Why was it a 7 and how could we change that? And because we stopped and talked about it, right then and there it probably turned into an 8. I think everyone really placed some value on simply having those core values in place and us talking about them.

Establishing the company values was the easy part. Eventually grading ourselves on the implementation of these values was what worried me the most. But in the end, it was refreshing to know that this thing that was important to me, that I thought they had forgotten about, they had clearly remembered and placed value on. And as the president of the company, that felt good.

Actually, it’s about time to do that again!

 

Birmingham, Alabama-based Max Coating is a leader in the metal finishing industry and provides electrocoating and powder coating services for automotive, industrial and agricultural manufacturers. Learn more at www.maxcoating.com.