What Zuckerburg thinks of your care organisation's values

2024-06-24 10:27

Facebook’s internal motto, ‘Move fast and break things’ was huge in the tech startup world.

It’s about one thing: growth. It gave Facebook employees such a clear focus and philosophy for their work.

Now, ‘Move fast and break things’ is unlikely to work in the care sector. But I think Zuckerburg has some good advice for us.

As the Facebook founder said:

“My whole theory on values is that a lot of organizations have values which don’t mean very much—because they’re just table stakes, things like ‘Be honest.’ Of course you’re going to be honest! That’s not an option—you’re not giving anything up to be honest, that’s an automatic. That shouldn’t be a defining principle of the company, that should be a principle of every company. So ‘move fast’ I think is interesting because you actually have to be willing to give something up to get it. And the question is, what are you willing to give up?”

I certainly see a lot of generic organisational values in our sector. Some actually including ‘caring’ like it’s not a given.

But one care home owner I spoke to said he was looking at a value of ‘Kindness to a fault’. I think this is an interesting thought.

Every company would claim kindness is a value. But who would want ‘Kindness, even if it hurt productivity, or profit?’

Values don’t come for free

So when you come to write your organisation’s values, talk not only of what you stand for, but what you’re willing to pay to make that stand.