As head of a small business, your values bleed into the company culture whether you intend them to or not. Here's how to mindfully craft a company philosophy.
Any company can sell Product X or provide Service Y, but what differentiates you from everyone else in your field is your company philosophy. A company's philosophy is a distillation of its culture or ambience into a group of core values that inform all aspects of its business practices. Having a strong company philosophy is a good way to guide your employees at decision-making crossroads, but it can also be a strong branding tool, and generally make your workplace more congenial.
For example, Tony Hsieh, Zappos' CEO and a respected culture crafter, sometimes tells the story of a customer service representative who got a call from a woman whose husband had died in a car accident after she had ordered boots for him from Zappos. The day after the call, the widow received flowers that the rep had sent her on the company's dime without consulting a supervisor. At the funeral the widow related the experience to her friends and family.
So by fostering a culture in which employees can make such a call--the first of Zappos' 10 core values exhorts employees to go "above and beyond the average level of service to create an emotional impact on the receiver"--Hsieh walks away with a hat trick. His staff was able to be decisive when it counted; his brand gained a powerful addition to its narrative, plus a devoted customer; and the call center rep felt empowered by being granted such license.
How to Create a Company Philosophy: Keep it in Context
How does a company's philosophy relate to other values-oriented parts of your company such as your mission statement or your code of ethics? "In some ways these terms all overlap. They are attempting to create an identity for the company that distinguishes it in the marketplace," says David Ulrich, a business professor at the University of Michigan and co-founder of the RBL Group, a consultancy that advises businesses on human resources, leadership, and organization.
Not every company needs to have a mission statement, philosophy, and code of ethics but one example of a company that has all three is Google.
• Mission statement: A mission statement should succinctly summarize what you do or what your aims are. Google's stated mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
• Philosophy: A philosophy should flesh out the mission statement, which is pithy and almost sloganlike into core ideas or values that the company and its members hold dear and adhere to in their business dealings. Google's philosophy includes such principles as "fast is better than slow," democracy on the Web works," and "you can be serious without a suit."
• Code of ethics: A code of ethics or code of conduct expands even further on the philosophy and the mission statement to deal with specific types of situations and behaviors. Google, for example, lays out its policies on, among other things, conflicts of interest, customer service, and confidentiality.
Ulrich continues, "There are dimensions of this identity: the philosophy being a set of principles that govern work, the mission statement about why we work, and code of ethics about our values in doing work. But they all try to position a company's identity in the minds of those inside and outside the company."
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