Core Values.
Part 2 of The Playbook Series. Your mission is the roof. Now build the columns that hold it up. Values every employee lives by or leaves.
The Playbook Series
If you read Part 1, you wrote a mission and vision statement. If you skipped Part 1, go back. Nothing here works without it.
For most people who own a moving company, this is their first business. Nobody sat them down and explained why a mission statement matters. It feels like something big corporations do. Something with a boardroom and a PowerPoint.
Now we take that mission and vision and build the columns underneath it. The non-negotiables. The behaviors every single person in your company either lives by or exits. Not guidelines. Not suggestions. The lines that do not bend.
Core values.
This Is Where It Gets Real
After Part 1, you might have been thinking: okay, I wrote a mission statement, cool. Now what? It still feels abstract. Still feels like words on paper.
Part 2 is where it starts to click. Not 100% yet. That happens in Part 3 when we get to competencies. But right now, you are about 50% of the way there. You are building the system that makes everything below it work.
Based on your mission and vision, you now ask yourself one question:
"What behavior does my mission and vision demand from every person in this company?"
You are not here to reinvent yourself. You are here to discover what is already there and put a system around it.
This is going to hurt
The core values you write here are going to have consequences. In Part 3, we turn them into competencies. Competencies that you enforce. Every time. With every person. No exceptions.
You cannot do this selectively. Your core values will drive the decision every single time. If you write "accountability" as a value, you will fire your top salesperson for not being accountable. If you are not willing to do that, do not write it.
How to Discover Yours
Ask yourself: how do I compromise on things? In a crisis, how do I decide? What do I refuse to bend on even when it costs me money?
If you discover that you are not consistent, you have a bigger problem. It means your core values as a person are not there. And people can see it. They behave the way they do because they know it can go either way. So they play it that way.
The line you do not cross
Your core values cannot be compromised even if you are on the brink of bankruptcy. If you would abandon a value to save the company, it was never a value. It was a preference.
Do not go beyond five. Everyone needs to be able to remember them after a while. If you need a cheat sheet for your own values, they are not values. They are a wish list.
Look at What You Tolerate. Not What You Say.
"Look at what you tolerate, not what you say."
Rodney Warner
This is the test. Forget what you put on the poster. Look at what happens in your company right now.
But you have a manager who blames everyone else and keeps his job.
Your real value is: it's okay to blame others.
But you rush jobs to close more deals.
Your real value is: volume over quality.
Be honest. Fix the gap. Or remove the value. A value nobody enforces is worse than no value at all. Because it teaches your team that words here mean nothing.
How the Best Moving Companies Built Theirs
The moving industry is full of companies with copy-paste mission statements and copy-paste values. Nobody connects them. Nobody lives them. Most moving companies copy each other's values the same way they copy each other's emails and pricing. That is why they all look the same. That is why none of them stand out.
Here are the ones that did it differently. Every value traces back to something real.
JK Moving Services
"To be the best — for our customers, our employees, and our community."
Three words did all the work. Customers. Employees. Community. Not just profits. All three. That forced everything below it.
Value: Ownership
Vision says: best for our customers. Best means the job gets done right. On time. Within budget. When something goes wrong, you fix it. You don't blame others. A company where people point fingers cannot be the best. Ever.
Value: Raise the Bar
Vision says: best. But best is not a finish line. Best moves. What is best today is average tomorrow. Everyone here must embrace challenges. Not just accept them. You cannot stay the best by staying comfortable.
Value: Commit to Growth
Vision says: best for our employees. Best for your employees is not just a paycheck. It means they grow. They get better every year. Everyone is expected to learn and add skills. Every person. No exceptions.
What "community" forced
Most companies write community in their vision and do nothing. JK's founder Chuck Kuhn took his own land and built a 150-acre farm. A nonprofit farm that grows organic food and gives 100% of it to children, senior citizens, and families facing hunger. Not a check to a charity. Not a logo on a banner. A real farm. Built because the vision said community, and he meant it.
Customers → Ownership. Best → Raise the Bar. Employees → Commit to Growth. Community → 150-acre farm. Every value traces back to one sentence.
Two Men and a Truck
"Continuously strive to exceed our customers' expectations in value and high standard of satisfaction."
Notice the word choice. They did not say "be the best." They said "continuously strive to exceed." That is a different mission with different consequences. "Be the best" forces you to only hire top performers and fire anyone who falls short. "Strive to exceed" forces you to care. To try harder. To never settle for just okay. It is a warmer mission. And it created warmer values.
Value: The Grandma Rule
Mission says: exceed expectations. In the moving industry, expectations are low. Customers expect things to break. They expect to be ignored. So what does "exceed" force? Treat people the way you would want your grandmother treated. With patience. With care. With respect. Not "be professional." Not "be polite." Grandma. That is a feeling, not a standard.
Value: Integrity
Mission says: high standard of satisfaction. High standard means no hidden surprises. No fine print that changes the price. No excuses when something goes wrong. You cannot exceed expectations while lying about what to expect.
Value: Give Back
This one did not come from the mission statement. It came from a moment. At the end of her first year in business, Mary Ellen Sheets made $1,000 in profit. She donated all of it to charity. Ten nonprofits received $100 each. She had almost nothing. And she gave everything away. That set the standard from day one. Today all franchises combined have donated over $260 million to their communities.
Exceed expectations → Grandma Rule. High standard → Integrity. Who the founder was → Give Back. Every value traces back to something real. Not a list someone found online.
The Pattern
Every time: the mission forces the values. The values force how managers behave. The behavior forces what you hire for and what you fire for.
A vague mission forces nothing. So the values are vague. So the behavior is inconsistent. So the culture is chaos.
A specific mission forces specific values. Specific values force specific behavior. That is a company. Everything else is just a group of people showing up.
Your Turn
Take your mission and vision from Part 1. Read it again. Now ask: what behavior does this demand? What would I never compromise on, even if it costs me money? Even if it means losing my best salesperson?
Write down no more than five. Make them real. Make them yours. If you copied them from someone else's website, throw them out and start over.
Then look around your company. Look at what you tolerate. If what you tolerate contradicts what you wrote, one of them has to change. Either the value goes or the behavior goes. You cannot have both.
What Comes Next
Right now you have a mission, a vision, and core values. It still might feel abstract. You might be thinking: great, I have five values on paper. Now what? How does this actually change my Monday morning?
Part 3 is where it hits the ground. We take your core values and turn them into competencies. Specific, measurable behaviors you hire for, evaluate against, and fire for. That is when the whole system clicks. That is when you see why everything we built in Part 1 and Part 2 matters.
Your mission and vision force your core values. They are not separate.
Core values answer: what behavior does my mission demand from every person?
No more than five. If you can't remember them, nobody else will either.
Your real values are what you tolerate, not what you say.
A value you wouldn't enforce on the brink of bankruptcy was never a value.
Next: Part 3 turns these values into competencies you can hire, evaluate, and fire by.
Before you move on
Write your values. Not in your head. On paper. Then walk around your company and honestly ask: do we live these? If the answer is no, the work starts before Part 3. Fix the gap between what you say and what you tolerate. Otherwise competencies built on top of this will crack the moment they are tested.
Next in the series
Part 3: Competencies.
Your values are written. Now turn them into competencies you can hire for, evaluate against, and fire by. This is where the system clicks.