Carl J. Cox 8:03

So I think one of the bags a company that I work with an educational company for nearly a decade. And for us, we worked really, really hard at this. So in our vision ultimately was to transform the lives of people through classroom audio systems. And so we wanted to create an opportunity where teachers and kids had this incredible experience, through basically microphones to be able to hear better, so it can enhance their lives. And when we were able to get rallied around that it is solidified our purpose. And and we became you know, as an organization, we became one with that concept. And what was fun is when we helped get to there, we actually ended up tripling in size. And it was, it’s because vision and mission is just as much about saying what you are going to do versus what you’re not going to do. And when that vision is clear, you can make those decisions so much easier. It’s that leader management’s job is to figure out, hey, this is where we’re going. And these are the places where we’re going to play. And then it’s management’s job to figure out how you’re going to get there. And I think what that’s put together well, you get so much more alignment with an organization

Jeremy Weisz 9:30

when you come to a company, and this is one of the most important things and I don’t know, if people gloss over it, do they think it’s kind of too touchy-feely or do people take it seriously? With the vision part?

Carl J. Cox 9:46

I think they they don’t take it seriously when it’s not true. Hmm. And and so I’ll go back to the company, I was just referring to it and actually just talking to somebody else, they did something similar actually Put a shout out to Adi Klevit with Business Success Consulting Group. She talked about this with actually that she does with her clients. core values is something that is often people poopoo. But when you all have said in in your hiring process, include your core values and ask your potential new employees about their thoughts on it. It creates incredible insights about who they are. And all of a sudden, when you do that, when they come walk in the door from the first place, they’re like, wow, these people are serious. They really mean this. And just to clarify, we actually didn’t hire people at the company I was with who didn’t answer those questions, while they were completely qualified. From a job capability standpoint, like they had the skill sets they had, they had maybe the desire, but they’re being side. They, they didn’t have it. And so since we knew they weren’t going to be a good fit, we didn’t even waste their time and our time, continuing into the interview process, when you start doing things like that, it starts becoming very powerful. I’ll go into this integrity is probably the number one core value you’re going to find with an organization. The problem is, if I tell you, you lack integrity, that’s sort of like calling your mom a bad name. And you might get slapped in the face, you know. And so it’s never good to have just integrity, you get to define what integrity means that your organization. So often, where things fail is like, Oh, we’ve got our five core values, or three core values, or our six core values, whatever they are, you actually have to define that from key behaviors. So you take the next level down and say, okay, integrity at our organization means that could be three to behaviors, when we write down documents will be consistent with our with our words, that they’re accurate from the research information that it came from. It was a little long winded, but basically saying we’re gonna document accurately. Well, I can now have a conversation with an employee and say, you know, what this document that you wrote, was a example of not a violation of against our core values, because you weren’t accurately writing in here. And we need to make sure that gets back on track, versus saying, hey, you lack integrity. And when it’s defined 

Jeremy Weisz 12:19

It makes it more objective? 

Carl J. Cox 12:22

That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. It’s at the end of the day is taking something that’s fuzzy, and making clear and saying these are the behaviors that which define how we do business here.

Jeremy Weisz 12:31

Yeah. So from core values, and then I know I’m jumping around a little bit, because we will I want to hear kind of exercise that you take some of the leaders and executives through to come to a vision statement to come to a mission statement, and the core values, but I’m gonna I’m gonna stick with the core values for a second, which is it almost like you tell people to create KPIs around their core values?

Carl J. Cox 13:00

There are Yes, yeah, effectively they are. They’re there. Well, it’s interesting. Let me let me pull back from it. That often, we think a key performance indicator is a specific measurement, right? of like, it’s some type of value is being measured? Well, we’ve, I’ve had this working with organizations and organizations that I’ve worked with in the past, where you actually start saying, Okay, if we’re going, let’s say, generosity is your core value. And so then you might say, well, an example of generosity is us, giving time back to the community. Okay, that’s great. So what are the actions we’re doing to actually support that action? So then you get to actually measurement saying, Hey, you know, what our goal this year is to have all employees contribute, and we’re going to pay for them to give 2% of their time, to actually a charitable organization, where that’s now measurable. So now you can go back and saying, you know, what, this year, not only did we have generosity as a core value, our key behavior did fine. It was charitable, you know, it was sorry, was community actions. And through that, we now can measure that 1.5% of our time was doing towards there, we didn’t meet our goal. But you know what, it was a good effort in the process. And these are the things we’re going to do next year to help get in place to do the right things to help exceed that 2% goal. Then all of a sudden, you have something that is fuzzy isn’t clear. And you make it very clear about how what we mean about generosity and serving the community with our organization.

Jeremy Weisz 14:37

Yeah, I love that. Because it goes in generosity like Well, yeah, I mean it when you have that objective, clear, tangible well are 1000 employees, each, you know, basically spent 100 hours doing charitable work well, we donate 100,000 hours this year to charitable organizations, so I could definitely see that So let’s go to vision for a second you’re with an organization, you’re basically helping them figure out or kind of draw out their true north. What are the exercises you have them go through. And if there’s an example, to ask themselves or each other questions to get to a very succinct, you know, what I noticed about some of the visions you talked about, they’re, they’re pretty succinct, like, have a computer and every desktop or, you know, I remember the iPod is have, you know, I mean, that was maybe not a good example of vision. But that is a very succinct on what they’re talking about what their their goal big vision is.

Carl J. Cox 15:42

I think there’s, there’s, I’m a big believer in having these be as clear and succinct as possible, with all the things that are written out, especially like a vision statement, but I’m going to say about, but there’s also a concept of what it’s called the Envision future. And the Envision future is talking in more detail about this is what our future is going to look like. And this is what it’s going to feel like. And this is what rooms we’re gonna this, this is the furniture we’re going to have in the house, so to speak, you know, when we actually get there. And so I what I like to do is actually like to have the CEO or perhaps a couple members, or maybe multiple members of the executive team, to write out this envision future. When you do that, it not only solidifies a little bit more clearly clearly about what your specific distinct vision statement might be, because you could end up doing exercises to say, okay, what’s more important? Is it this or that? Or is it this and that, you get to that element, then all of a sudden, people feel a lot more excited. And then what’s really interesting is that envision future help start setting the next path, which is what goals should be working on. And that’s the next big stage that I work with an organization. So what’s nice is you try to create a process that starts in one place, and then you go to the next right, it’s already bringing you to Hey, if this is our vision, while we have to be doing these things to help accomplish that vision,

Jeremy Weisz 17:17

How important is talking about a specific timeframe in this process?

Carl J. Cox 17:23

I so my general, I like to do, I like to have a 10 year big, hairy, audacious goal about kind of stretching ourselves really far. I like to have three to five year things which are more strategic in nature. And then one year that when you start getting your strategy, it gets down to the tactics a little bit more, these are the things we’re going to do this year to help start moving to our three to five year goal into our 10 year, big, hairy audacious goal, what you do want to see is that there’s alignment, if any of these things are not moving us towards that envision future, then you know, you’re going to have conflict. And it’s really important these processes say once again, I go back to it just as important for just important to say these are the things we are doing. And these are the things that we’re not doing.

Jeremy Weisz 18:11

So we go from vision, Carl, to mission. So say again, exactly what the mission is. And then what are some of the next step exercises, they should be asking themselves to draw their mission out?

Carl J. Cox 18:30

Yeah, so once getting vision is a clear statement about what the future is going to look like. While a mission statement is your purpose is this is the act of getting towards there. And so it tends to be in that way, like a mission set, you know, the traditional term of mission came from actually a military terminology. The mission is to if you think of World War Two, right, and the Allies the mission, if you think the European work was to free Europe, free Western Europe, and get democracy back that was the mission. And and so that’s the big type of statements you want to be making from a missions that it’s really the mission VCs, that’s the reason why people getting out of bed each day is to drive towards that action to ultimately meet your future vision, which is to have a free Europe and using once again use that analogy from from World War Two.

Jeremy Weisz 19:31

What’s a mission statement that sticks out to you from a company? Have you have any in mind that you’ve helped people with or just another company from a business perspective? What would be an example of a mission statement that action oriented moving towards your vision?

Carl J. Cox 19:50

And you’re gonna ask that Jeremy I can’t think of one right. But, but do to

Jeremy Weisz 19:59

make one up You know, a business has a certain vision. And what, again, like you cannot the core value generosity is a core value or, you know, but what what is a kind of a generic mission, I know, missions aren’t going to be generic, but from a business standpoint, what would be an example something tangible.

Carl J. Cox 20:23

So perhaps a more clear mission statement would be, you know, are just maybe, perhaps to a company that’s in like the biomedical field. And and their mission might be, you know, our purpose is to assure that all individuals that are working at a pullback, our mission is to make sure that patients are cancer free with a certain type of disease, that that would be an example of like a mission that, you know, we’re trying to fruit have a cancer-free world, or are we looking today’s modern-day, we’re trying to have a COVID, free world. And so, and we’re doing this by, right, that’s a secondary part by x, y, and z. So they’re much more action-oriented. And then they should be pretty clear about this is this is, this is where we’re going and how we’re making a dent in the world.

Jeremy Weisz 21:19

Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m putting you on the spot with a bunch of these. Because the funny thing is, there’s so many, and you’ve done this for so long that like, it just depends on the industry, it depends on so many things. So I appreciate you, you know, thinking about it. And so from vision mission, you talked about the core values, are there? Same thing, exercise, how do you flush this out with the company? Because usually, do companies come to you? is this? Do they have this in hand? Is this usually half baked? Is it not baked? What are companies coming to you with Typically,

Carl J. Cox 22:00

what I see from a lot of organizations is some level of vision slash mission. And sometimes they’re kind of combined in the way how they’re written. It’s not uncommon to see core values, it’s very uncommon to see the key behaviors which support them. So that’s, that’s typically what I see when I walk into organizations. So when I asked them that question, I was asking beforehand, so how do you define integrity? They’re like, Well, what do you mean integrities? This, but then you ask the next person, they go, what’s this? person? What’s this? And he realized there’s no such thing as integrity, even if they own an organization where they thought everybody knew what they were talking about. So how you test these out? Is you you actually survey the group and you say, how close on a scale one to five? How are we extremely like this? Are we kind of like this, you know, are we not really like this? Are we you know, that kind of classic one through five scale. And, and then you’re gonna start getting a closer understanding of who you really are. So what what you you, you know, if you, like, if you did a classic thing and said, okay, write a whiteboard. And so I love whiteboards, right? And so, you know, I write in a whiteboard and say, Okay, here’s our, here’s our 27 ideas are core values, or perhaps it’s only the five that they have. But then once again, to ask the question, how consistent are how likely are we really like this, and you kick out the ones that aren’t good. You have to, because those are the things that are getting us and then what you can get to is okay, we can maybe make this an aspirational value. But I think what’s more important, is you’re going to unearth the things of who you really are. Because people don’t like to say we’re not that, but when you can say, Hey, we’re really more like this, right? Then they’re going to feel better about it. And what you what I typically experience when you go through that process, and you prioritize, and you label and you and you put words behind it, there’s this alignment, and there’s kind of almost this peace that comes at the end result. Now I will say this thing is like a vision statement and mission statement, the key behaviors, core values, it’s a little bit like a fine wine, you kind of have to let it sit and resonate a little bit because there’s so deep and so powerful, that sometimes different words make a big difference. And and so I think it’s okay to reflect upon those on a periodic basis to make sure that they’re still consistent, and that they still are right today. Because it’s okay for them to change. You know, you the reality is you change, you bring new people in organization, especially critical leaders. They’re gonna be changing things, but I would actually argue this, it’s an all the more important to have good core values. So people are moving their behaviors to be more closely aligned to what the antithesis The patient or the goal or the organization is, yeah.

Jeremy Weisz 25:04

You know, it kind of goes what you were saying within the alignment in the alignment, it seems comes from making sure it’s associated with the key behaviors, though. Yes,

Carl J. Cox 25:14

yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah, it’s, I go back to this, you got to walk the walk. And and most people get that you’re gonna walk the talk, you got to walk the walk? And if you don’t, don’t even have it written down, because then you’re lying. I mean, honestly, right. You know, there’s this, this sense of, Oh, yeah, they have integrity. Well, once again, you know, let’s get to things that have key behaviors that can be definable, and something we could actually measure against. And then all of a sudden, we can we can validate, hey, we were doing this, most of the time, we feel very comfortable with this. We also have to realize we’re humans, and we’re not perfect. And it’s sort of like the eye kind of, I’m going to be careful the statement, when people say, oh, we’re always honest. Well, when we tell people, how are you doing today, I’m doing great. And we rented a car, and we just say, we’re doing great, we, you know, it’s like, you know, we lie all the time. Oh, this thing’s how to look today, honey, oh, you look fabulous, you know, and now there’s like a ketchup stain or something like that. And sure, I mean, we we, honestly are pretty inconsistent with our day-to-day communication. So and people know that. So getting to the things that really matter to our organization, how it operates, is really important. It’s really important to have that clearly defined.

Jeremy Weisz 26:32

Yeah, what I like about the core values, and when you talk about them is you have to put them into your hiring process, you have to ask questions, to hire for your core values, and also in the business, how do you measure those core values within the business. And so it’s really becomes in the DNA of the business, if you do those two things.

Carl J. Cox 26:56

We at once again, I go back this company, that was where I probably learned the most about core values and strategy. And we actually had a core value award winners. And we had people from the company, say, so we’d have different core, and they would have to actually say, these are the key behaviors that they did that exemplified our core values, and we would be on the normally did we award them, we actually put them in a plaque. But we actually even gave him money too. And and, and we like sometimes we’d have a trip combined with it like some type of non monetary award. I tell you what, when you start doing that, and then we would do even simple, subtle little things like we’d have like core value winner kind of shout outs. And we just say, hey, Sally, the other day, she stayed two hours later to, to pick up something that needed to be picked up to the client and get this particular product. And I just want to say this, this exemplifies our value of customer service. And I just want to say, Sally, Sally, thank you, you start talking about those things in a regular basis, then all of a sudden, the culture keeps on gaining traction. If you don’t do it, it goes back to people’s own sense of what it really is. And that’s not healthy.

Jeremy Weisz 28:15

Yeah, Thanks for clarifying that. It goes a step further from hiring, to measuring to appreciating and awarding, as far as the core values go. So Carl, is we’re walking through kind of this step by step process to blow past your competition. You talked about vision, in the alignment with the vision, the mission, the core values. And I figured, you know, we just take the last moment to, for you to talk about a few examples that you see.

Carl J. Cox 28:46

Yeah, there’s a lot of great examples that are out there a few that I just wanted to pull out that I think, a little bit more clear. I mentioned that Microsoft, you know, as found he has a computer on every desktop and in every home and that was, like I said to me is still one of the best one. Alzheimer’s Association, a world without Alzheimer’s disease, you know, very clear, very concise, you know, that’s that’s their vision for the future. LinkedIn has create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. You know, these are very clear, very concise, and and very, from a mission perspective. From a mission statement, you know, that they go into some slightly, you know, different parts. Patagonia, which I think is an extraordinary company, they talk about build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis. So, you may have heard of, specifically how Patagonia would have actually put an ad and said don’t buy our coats. Beforehand, they were trying to totally support of the element of Hey, if you don’t need to buy a coat don’t because from from not buying is the best first thing you could do. That’s pretty fascinating, right? But there’s they so believe in their cause environmental part, they were help supporting it, IKEA to create a better everyday life for the many people now, I think that’s an you know an excellent example of a mission now when you actually get built to build those things. Now my personal fight at home, but that’s their mission 

Jeremy Weisz 30:20

How to create more divorces, IKEA. No, I’m just kidding.

Carl J. Cox 30:26

So Warby Parker for a serious one, you know, Warby Parker is to offer a designer eyewear at a revolutionary price while leading the way of socially conscious businesses. There are so many good examples of them. And then there’s times when they’re not as good. But as you could see, the diff key difference the vision and mission is the mission is more about your action and your purpose versus the vision about an example of what it’s going to look like in the future.

Jeremy Weisz 30:52

Yeah, everyone I want, you know, should check out the website, check out the book, then I’m looking forward to you know, chatting more about these concepts because the clear compass, there’s, you know, seven steps to this right, which is, you know, next one selecting destination and going on from there. So check out more episodes of the podcast. You have great guests. And Carl, thank you for having me.

Carl J. Cox 31:16

Hey, thank you so much. Jeremy. I really appreciate it.

Outro 31:21

Thanks for listening to the Measure Success Podcast. We’ll see you again next time to learn from the best. Remember to subscribe now to get future episodes.