Your mission, vision, and values are incredibly important to building a great company culture and an effective go-to-market strategy. When done well, they should shape every decision you make, from hiring team members, to taking on new clients, to implementing management policies.
But once you’ve taken the time to develop your core values, how do you actually get your team onboard with it all? How do you take it from page to practice?
In this article, I’ll give you my recommendations for how to roll out those ideas internally, why you need a firm line in the sand date, and why getting buy-in from your team is so essential.
Getting everyone on board
A new company mission, or a redeveloped vision can all be jarring for your team. In a lot of ways, you’re telling them, “hey, we’re going to be a different company moving forward.” That can be tough for people to get used to, especially those who have been around for a while.
Existing employees
The people who already work for you usually need the most help adjusting to a change in mission. For one thing, they may already feel like they have their own sense of mission at your company, even though it might not be one that’s explicitly stated. There’s a reason they continue working for you, so the idea of a big change might scare them.
Second, they’re fully accustomed to operating without the new mission, vision, and core values. It’s a bit like having family dinner every week where no one in your family is a hugger. And then suddenly someone brings a new guest who hugs everyone they meet. It can really throw people off. In the same way, existing employees are going to be the least comfortable with change.
New employees and future hires
It’s much easier to get new hires onboard with change, simply because they don’t know anything else. The key, though, is to make sure you’re incorporating your new mission and vision into the hiring process. Not only will it help you pick employees who fit the new approach, but it will also ensure that you’re giving them a consistent experience. The way you treat them during the interview and hiring process needs to be consistent with how you treat them once they’re hired.
Drawing a line in the sand
One of the most important pieces of advice I can give is to decide on a firm date where your new mission and vision take effect, and then stick to it. You basically want to create a bookmark, at which point you said, “from this point forward, this is how we make decisions.”
How you mark that date is up to you. You can take the opportunity to roll out a new project, you can incorporate it into branding changes like a new logo or slogan, or you can give out coffee mugs or t-shirts with the new branding. Whatever you do, you want to mark the change.
Make sure that you’re communicating it to the whole company at once, rather than letting it trickle out bit by bit. That helps make sure everyone is on the same page and has a complete understanding of what’s happening. And keep in mind, even company leadership isn’t used to doing this kind of thing, so it’s helpful for you, too!
Get the team involved
As you’re preparing this rollout, you don’t want to overplan. Instead, you want to leave room to get the rest of the team involved. People support what they help create, so make sure they have the chance to do that.
I think about it this way: the leader creates the mission and vision, which are basically the bones of the operation. But everyone else can participate in fleshing it out by shaping the core values. If you come with a full set of core values already fully developed, you run the risk of coming across as too much of a dictator.
You want to tell your team, “As of today, we’re going to be a different company, and let’s figure out what that looks like together.” You want to get people excited about what you’re doing, and giving them the opportunity to participate is the best way to get buy-in.
Repetition, repetition, repetition
The single best way to help your team truly understand your new mission, vision, and core values is simply repetition. You need to be saying, showing, and living your core values at every turn.
Reinforcement in meetings
As I’ve said before, meetings are a perfect time to highlight core values in action. There are three different categories of shout-outs I like to include in weekly team meetings:
- Recognize when other team members are operating by core values: You want to acknowledge your teammates when they’re doing things right. Give praise where it’s due, which will help inspire others to follow along the same path.
- Call out when the organization is not operating in alignment: It’s equally important to recognize when things aren’t following your core values, but you don’t want to call out individuals and tell them they’re doing a bad job. Instead, frame it as an organizational problem and brainstorm ways to make improvements with the team.
- Celebrate corrections that move you into alignment with them: When you make adjustments that put you in better alignment with your core values, that’s worth celebrating. It shows the team what progress looks like, and it’s a positive way to follow the conversation on where the organization is struggling.
Keep in mind, it can be awkward to ask people to brag about themselves. It takes some getting used to for a lot of team members, but you need to stand by it. Start by having someone read off the mission or core values to start the conversation, and go from there.
If you keep repeating the process, eventually it will catch on.
Teach by example
As with most things, your team can’t just read a plan on paper and know exactly how to put it into action. Instead, they need to see it play out so they know what it looks like.
Adopting new core values is a bit like learning a new language; the best way to do it is via immersion. That means that, as a leader, you need to constantly be showing what it means to act based on core values, and then you need to be highlighting those behaviors in others.
I’ve seen property managers announce new core values, put a poster on the wall of their office, and then do nothing else to reinforce them. Then, four or six months later, they scold an employee for doing something that’s not in alignment with those core values. But of course they’re not acting by core values: they’ve never seen what that looks like. They’ve never been immersed in it. It’s never been reinforced.
Remember, it’s up to the business owner and leadership to overcommunicate these changes and the expectations that come with them.
Dealing with dissent
Sometimes, no matter how much you reinforce the changes and celebrate the wins, you’ll have an employee who just isn’t bought in. That can create a pretty uncomfortable situation, not just for you, but for the whole team.
Remember, the loyalty of a leader should be to the overall team and company, not individual members of the team. If someone is harming the overall team culture, you have to do something about it.
Of course, a lot of times, the people who aren’t going to buy in will realize it themselves. They’ll start looking for a new place to work that might be a better fit for them. That’s not always a bad thing; it can be positive for all parties. But you want to be able to say that you did everything you could to help them adjust and stay on as a productive, happy member of your team.
No matter what you do, your team is probably never going to be as bought in as you are, because you’re the business owner. But that’s why you need to constantly evaluate everything you do through the lens of your mission, vision, and values.
Final thoughts
It might seem like rolling out a new set of core values will be challenging, but in reality it’s a fabulous opportunity to energize your team. It gives people a common mission to work towards and a better understanding of the work they do. Make sure that you’re giving insight into the why behind all of it so that people get excited about it.
I truly believe that people want to be part of something great. They want to feel a sense of purpose, productivity, and connection. The more time we spend on our devices, isolating ourselves from others, the less we have that connection. So give them that opportunity, build a strong, connected team, and give them something clear to work toward.
Interested in learning more about building your company’s core values? Check out this webinar with my good friend Mark Brower.
May 1, 2025
