It’s just a fact of human nature – Not everyone has the same set of values. But what should you do if you discover that one of your high performers is a values mismatch with your organization?
There are two aspects to evaluating people: One is performance and the other is citizenship—whether people are operating closely in relation to your values.
If a person is a lousy performer and also not a good values match, that’s an easy decision. The tough decision is what to do if you have a high performer who’s just not a good citizen—this person is not following your values. What do you do? Well, if your values are important, you have to deal with it.
A few years ago we fired our top salesperson. That really sent a message out. He was a great performer, but our number one value is ethics, our number two value is relationships, number three is success, and number four is learning. He was focusing all his energy on the success value. He was doing stuff that really wasn’t right and he was stepping on other people’s toes. We talked to him and tried to work with him, but finally decided we needed to share him with our competition.
Remember: If you don’t deal with a values mismatch and you just let it go, pretty soon your people will say, “Those values are on the wall but they don’t mean anything.” Don’t let that happen in your organization.
