There has been research on the number of values a company should maintain and communicate. James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras have done extensive analysis of the successful habits of visionary companies. They devote a significant amount of effort defining the role and importance of core values in a visionary company’s culture. Collins and Porras found that “visionary companies tend to have only a few core values, usually between three and six. In fact, we found none of the visionary companies to have more than six core values, and most have less. And, indeed, we should expect this, for only a few values can be truly core—values so fundamental and deeply held that they will change or be compromised seldom if ever.” The message here is to keep your core values list limited.
If your list is of the short-term-importance type, you will spend excessive time arguing the validity of the list. In fact, there may be a direct correlation between the amount of time spent discussing operational values and the length of the list. Don’t spend a lot of time in disagreement over what should be or shouldn’t be on the list. That argument is really not as important as what honesty means to the team as a core value. Don’t spend any time putting the list into an order of priority. That, too, is a waste of your valuable management time. You will be considering the complete list anyway, so a priority activity is not necessary.
