JUNE - JULY 2024CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM9vision of their values. From day one, it influenced how they made business decisions, how they hired, how they sold, and how they built products. Our leadership team has always agreed that values are where we build our value­period, full stop. But how do we make this focus on values scalable as an organization grows? Shortly after I joined Sunbit, we set about memorializing these core values. As an HR leader, it was my job to observe, listen, and help bring these values to light in a tangible, visible way for the organization so that every employee and every new hire is always aligned. What came out were six core value statements that define how we do absolutely everything: Serve others before self. Act Fast On the Impact Connect Genuinely Include Always Innovate for the GoodWhile on the surface, these values are appealing and make sense to anyone in a technology organization scaling up, there is an inherent tension between them in combination. When you act fast, can you always include? And what if you also need to connect genuinely (actually speaking with a co-worker versus dashing off a quick Slack)? Or innovate for a good while serving others before self?Thinking about these tensions, I look to legendary UCLA men's basketball coach John Wooden, who led the Bruins to a record ten national championship titles with four perfect 30-0 seasons, just up the street from our Los Angeles headquarters. He would tell his team, "Be quick, but don't hurry." While there are many acolytes of Wooden's leadership lessons, not many remember this paradox and gem of his coaching philosophy.Rather, Silicon Valley and tech are full of people who will remember the value of "move fast, break things." That's hardly a paradox. That's a matador call. Ultimately, things break, and additional guidepost values get added. Because the truth is when we want our teammates to act fast, we are not asking them to act recklessly. We ask them to get things done with a sense of ownership because not doing so impacts something and someone we care about, whether customer, colleague, or client. At Sunbit, we expect our teams to employ good judgment because we are not asking them to act fast but insisting that they flex all of our core values and that they think and care about others. We insist that they live in paradox.Ensure Your Talent Definitions Are Explicit about Your Core Values Being the Standards for Success (And Promotion)Core values ­ whether paradoxical or not ­ mean nothing if leaders are not held accountable to them. As a younger organization, it was easier for our teams and leaders to `see' when someone was or wasn't living up to our values. Now that we're larger with distributed and cross-functional teams, it's natural that we cannot have the same direct visibility of how our people perform.Typically, dashboards are an easy way of creating transparency across geographies and teams. But do they give an organization a picture of how the team is achieving those numbers? With our core values, would we accept hitting our numbers quickly while burning a customer or a colleague in the process? Unequivocally, no. At Sunbit, it's not just enough to achieve value. To become a leader at Sunbit, we are vigilant about how that value is achieved. Like many organizations, Sunbit conducts assessments with cross-functional input. For our leaders and emerging leaders, we also allot time during a cross-functional meeting for the supervisor to present the leader and provide an overview of his/her core competencies. We then open the floor to those in attendance to provide supportive feedback and discuss how and who will mentor the leader as they develop. In addition to giving the direct report clear and supportive feedback, the process gives our entire leadership team clarity about consistent standards for our teams and ourselves. Core values can be just something on the walls. But when embraced and leveraged to help people think and care (not just do), core values become the heart of driving and achieving value. Core values ­ whether paradoxical or not ­ mean nothing if leaders are not held accountable to them
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