How to Choose the Right Core Company Values [70+ Examples] | Hotjar Blog

How to define and implement company values: how we did it at Hotjar

In the first six to nine months of Hotjar, we didn’t have any formalized values: the four co-founders and I were working together and figuring things out as we went. One of the things we were aiming for was being lean and shipping fast, and we didn’t need to write it down—we just made sure everybody was being lean and shipping fast, and corrected as we went.

Hotjar’s company values, round 1 (2015): articulating values for an early-stage startup

Things started to change when we prepared to hire our first team members. Defining our values became crucial because we needed a set of principles to help us choose the people we wanted to bring onboard.

Step 1 – speaking with individual co-founders

I started off by having an informal chat with each of the co-founders, talking through what we liked and cared about in the way we worked together.

<#4 of Hotjar's 5 cofounders in September 2014

Talking one-on-one was very important for balance. In a group situation, when you have a mix of people who like to listen and people who are more talkative, the conversation might go in the direction of the more dominant speakers. I wanted to avoid this and make sure our values would be balanced and reflect all of the founders’ personalities.

Step 2 – looking to others for inspiration—but proceeding with caution

Being fast and lean was important to us, so I spent time reading about lean principles in books like Selling the Invisible, which explains why speed of service and speed of acting are so important. I had also been recommended Delivering Happiness, which is about creating a happy culture and a profitable business.

On top of this reading list, I looked at the values of companies like Basecamp, MailChimp, Atlassian, InVision, who were kind of ‘breaking the rules’ back then, in terms of not really sticking to the status quo and to the typical way companies had been built before. A lot of these were either bootstrapped, capital-efficient, or remote, so I knew we had something in common.

Of course, I had to remind myself that Hotjar was still really, really small. Values that inspire hundreds of people in a big organization might not make sense for a tiny group of people who are putting in hard work to survive. It’s a big mistake I’ve seen before: small companies get carried away with inspiration and then end up with these fluffy, amazing-sounding values… that mean nothing to the team.

Step 3 – bringing the research together: Hotjar’s 8 values (2015)

As I ran my research and chatted to the co-founders, I kept collecting notes in Evernote so I could prepare a list that we’d tweak together.

It wasn’t a very sophisticated process, but it did mean we got what we needed: eight values we could use to start hiring straight away because now we knew exactly what to look for:

Always be HONEST
Always be LEARNING
SPEED wins
We aim for GOOD
Eliminate ‘IN PROGRESS’ work
Get FEEDBACK early
Create WOW!
Show RESPECT

Here is an example of how this helped: we’d get candidates to do a task as part of their interview process, and look at their work and deliverables in light of those principles. Could they develop things speedily? How receptive were they to feedback?

Once hired, we would also run quarterly reviews where each person would get a 1-5 rating on how well they were performing for each value. The values were written and shared with everybody as part of our team manual:

#Our old team manual (2015)

Hotjar’s company values, round 2 (2018): company values for the scaling stage

As Hotjar’s team grew into the double figures and passed the 50-person mark, those initial eight values started to lose some of their relevance. For example, “speed wins” was crucial early on when the whole point of existing was shipping and fixing things fast; but with 50 people and counting, building things ‘right’ might become more important than just building them ‘fast’.

<#The team in June 2018

This time around, I wanted to remove my own bias from the process—as a CEO, I tend to look at where we want to be, but the values need to encompass a lot of where we currently are—so we decided to bring a consultant on board.

Step 1 – surveying the team

The consultant helped us survey the entire company to understand what values the team thought described Hotjar, and which of the existing eight values resonated the most (in the image below, it’s the column on the left).

Based on that feedback, the consultant grouped the values together and came up with a list of four values (the section on the right):

#Hotjar company values - survey results

Step 2 – presenting the results & getting feedback from the team

When I saw that initial take on our values, I thought it was really well done. This is the reality for a CEO: you’re busy, there are a million things on your plate, someone writes something that reads wonderful and you think it’s great.

We were excited to share the results with the team, so we asked the consultant to present the findings to everybody during an afternoon Zoom call. We also used Slido.com so the team could ask questions throughout the presentation:

#Some questions from the team

After the call, we surveyed the team to get their reaction to the new values—and something interesting happened. Around half of the team was fairly positive, appreciated the fact that there were fewer values, and thought they described the company better than the previous set.

But the other half had a very negative reaction. They thought of these values as too ‘fluffy’, argued that they did not describe how we worked, and were, in fact, worse than what we already had.

In removing my own bias, I had introduced that of an external person who didn’t know and care about the company as much as we did.

Step 3 – re-owning the process

I took my time to process the feedback and came to the conclusion that, as a CEO, I needed to re-own the process myself. So I went back and checked in with the rest of the leadership and executive team to understand what was important to us, what was not important, and how to describe it.

I’m not going to lie: the process took months, but it was a wonderful exercise that led us to (re)prioritize the values and articulate them in a very intentional way. And at the end of the process, we got to the final version that exists today:

<#Hotjar's current (2019) company values

Step 4 – embedding the values

The work doesn’t end when you articulate the values: you need to embed them in the company to make sure they succeed.

The first step we took was making sure the team would remember the values. During our recent Tenerife meetup, we split the Hotjarians into teams and ran a Jeopardy-style quiz where teams would win points by uncovering and remembering values.

<#Company values jeopardy!

Immediately after, we launched a company-wide video challenge and asked the team to submit a 30-second video tying it back to one of Hotjar’s core values:

#Company values video challenge

Moving forward, we have started to become more intentional about rewarding success by attributing it to values—for example, we will congratulate a team for ‘being bold and moving fast’ rather than for ‘signing off on a big client’. Our leads are re-iterating the values and giving feedback to each team member based on them, and the team can challenge back and question how certain actions relate (or fail to do so) to a specific value.

The role of founders in articulating company values

It’s interesting to compare the two versions of our values. The first one from 2015 was very obviously founder-driven, with the input of five people and done through a quick process. The second one from 2018 took into account 60+ team members and included an external consultant, two rounds of surveys, a presentation, more feedback, and then me working closely with key stakeholders.

Notice that I’m not mentioning speaking to the founders anymore. As the company keeps growing, the founders’ thoughts are completely redundant. If the founders have hired people who have hired people who have hired people… you see where I’m going. Obviously, as a CEO I am responsible for the future of the company and what needs to happen, so I have sign-off on the values, but the final product came from all these sources together.

🔥 Our fully articulated company values are live for everybody to see. Check them out!

Other examples of company values from cutting-edge companies

Basecamp

Basecamp’s values, as published in their manual “what we stand for”

Be Straightforward.
Be fair and do the right thing.
Levelheadedness.
Generosity.
Independence.

MailChimp

Mailchimp’s values, based on their “How our employee radio station embodies our company values” article:

Humility
Creativity
Independence

Atlassian

Atlassian don’t hold back with their list of 5 company values:

Open company, no bullshit
Build with heart and balance
Don’t #@!% the customer
Play, as a team
Be the change you seek

InVision

InVision has a list of 6 core values:

Question assumptions
Think deeply
Iterate as a lifestyle
Details, details
Design is everywhere
Integrity

Hotjar

At Hotjar, we have a list of 5 core values:

Obsess over our users
Be bold and move fast
Work with respect
Build trust with transparency
Learn by doing

Wistia

The team at Wistia also uses emojis to express its values:

Long-term company thinking 🤔
Creativity 💡
Presentation 🖼
Simplicity ✂️

Automattic

Automattic’s values are based on what they call “The Automattic Creed”:

I will never stop learning.
I won’t just work on things that are assigned to me.
I know there’s no such thing as a status quo.
I will build our business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers.
I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague, and I’ll remember the days before I knew everything.
I am more motivated by impact than money, and I know that Open Source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation.
I will communicate as much as possible, because it’s the oxygen of a distributed company.
I am in a marathon, not a sprint, and no matter how far away the goal is, the only way to get there is by putting one foot in front of another every day.
Given time, there is no problem that’s insurmountable.