Why do company values matter?

As a company leader, I regularly ask myself how mature our company is. Alongside financial indicators, it is equally important to me how much we have developed in terms of team cohesion. Over the past nearly 10 years, we have never had more than 25 people at one time, yet more than 50 colleagues have worked with us in total during this period. But how can organisational maturity be measured? What can we use as a benchmark to determine our level of development in a constantly changing environment? I believe that the presence of clearly defined company values, and their role within the organisation, can help us assess this.

In a creative business, company values are not merely good-sounding words on a website or in a brand strategy – they are the foundation of everyday decisions and teamwork. Working according to clearly defined values helps hold the team together, makes decision-making faster and more effective, and ensures that the business remains true to its principles in the long term. It also allows us to keep reviewing whether our team dynamics and collaboration are developing in the right direction.

For example, if a junior designer disagrees with decisions made during UI design but does not dare to say that the planned website visuals are not working particularly well, because they feel that, as someone less experienced, they should not criticise them, this will hold the team back in the long term. However, if honest feedback is one of the company’s core values and we actively practise it – for example, by holding a ‘feedback round’ at the end of every meeting – everyone will understand that constructive feedback is not criticism for its own sake, but an opportunity to improve. (user interface)

An important milestone in the life of our team came at the beginning of 2024, when we finally defined Works.’ values with the involvement of the entire team. Here are some experiences and lessons from the past year:

• Once shared values have been established, they should always remain visible. Everyone should encounter them in everyday life. For us, the subject was relatively quickly forgotten last year and did not consciously form part of our daily work. **Now, however, as we are decorating the office, we will put our values up on the walls.**To prepare for this, at our most recent team discussion we collected stories that clearly demonstrate the presence or absence of each value. I felt that this helped colleagues internalise them. We also articulated our beliefs in complete sentences. Here they are:

• Values should not be abstract; they should be concrete guidelines that inspire action and can be translated into how we operate. It is not enough to create words; they must also be given substance. For some time now, we have held a full-day monthly ‘town hall’ (= professional development day). We talk a lot, discuss our field and also focus on the team’s mental wellbeing. Often indirectly, we examine how we work internally through the lens of our values.

• Sharing lived experiences helps people internalise values and connect with them. We had long tried to hold retrospectives after projects, but this happened in a fairly ad hoc way. Then, last year, we made them mandatory, and now everyone involved discusses each task after it has been completed. Processing lessons learnt, honestly confronting what happened, and voicing both positive and negative experiences all contribute to individual and team development. These retrospective conversations can of course be demanding at times, but they regularly produce clear, practical suggestions that we can incorporate into how we work to improve our efficiency or the quality of our work.

• Values also need to be communicated externally. The image people form of our company is significantly shaped by knowing what they can expect from us – and this can even make us accountable for it. We decided to include an introduction to our values in our renewed sales materials, address the topic in job advertisements, and, after all, this post was written for that reason too. 😊

I believe that if our company values truly become part of everyday life and we operate with them consciously in mind, this will not only strengthen team spirit, but also contribute to Works.’ long-term success.

Ákos