How We Live Our Values

This is the first in a series about S&C's five core values: Curiosity, Directness, Courage, Humanity, and Excellence. 

Everyone has good intentions when they write their corporate or organizational values. They might get put on a wall somewhere or in an employee handbook. But most of the time, that’s where it ends. 

My two partners and I started Smith & Connors in 2013 as an agency built on our five core values. Our intentions were good from the start, but it took us years to learn how to live fully into these concepts. We learned, over time, how powerful they are, and that they could be a key part of everything that we do. 

If you’re interested in how we do this, read on. 

What Values Are Actually For

If values aren’t just inspirational statements, then what are they? At S&C, our values guide our actions. We use them as decision-making tools about how our team works together, who we hire, which projects we take on, and how we engage with clients and community. 

When a conversation feels off, we check: is someone avoiding directness out of fear of being honest? When a client pushes back on our recommendation, we consider: is this a moment for courage, or do we need more humanity—more listening? When we’re hiring someone, we ask: Do they express similar values? 

Values are useful, in part, when they create a shared language for navigating hard moments. This means we can’t simply say “excellence.” We need to regularly talk about what excellence looks like in a real moment. We need to talk about what they really mean to us and show how they are demonstrated. For example, “excellence” doesn’t mean perfection, but it does mean that we pursue quality beyond the egos of the partners or even our clients. 

It means we advocate by speaking our truth, even when it’s in conflict with our client’s request and it may result in a difficult conversation. That’s when “we want to be sure the outcome is excellent” becomes a real conversation, not a platitude, and not a threat.

It’s hard, sometimes, to invoke our values in the middle of a tense conversation, or when a deadline is looming and shortcuts are tempting, or when someone on the team is letting their fear drive action. The test of whether your values are effective? They show up in moments of celebration and in difficult conversations.Values are useful, in part, when they create a shared language for navigating hard moments. This means we can’t simply say “excellence.” We need to regularly talk abut what excellence looks like in a real moment.

Values are useful, in part, when they create a shared language for navigating hard moments. This means we can’t simply say “excellence.” We need to regularly talk abut what excellence looks like in a real moment.

Why This Matters to Clients

Values show up for us from the very start of our relationship with clients. Yes, we put them in our proposals, but we also talk about them in the interview process. And we bring them up in various ways when we kick off the project, when we do presentations, and when we negotiate on deliverable feedback that impacts the efficacy of the work.

The purpose of this is to ensure that things work out well for everyone. We've learned that when a project goes sideways, it’s not always because the work missed the mark, but because someone wasn't willing to say the hard thing early enough. As humans, we don’t want to have uncomfortable conversations, but because directness is one of our values, it reminds us that it’s better to have that conversation in week two than discover a fundamental misalignment in week twelve.

Let’s look at our value of curiosity: To us, this means we should be open-minded and listen more. We don’t need to pretend we have all the answers. The worst thing we could do with a client is assume we already understand everything about their organization.

We want to work with clients and team members who are willing to be curious alongside us, who can receive directness without getting defensive, who have the courage to do something different from what they've always done. And, amazingly, we have found beautiful synergies when our values are at play: that a culture of curiosity is actually how we can create excellence, and it makes being direct a whole lot easier.

We sometimes say that we work with values-aligned clients. That can be interpreted as meaning that they share our political beliefs. While we do believe that our values generally lead to progressive politics, it goes much deeper than that. It’s really about looking at what beliefs undergird a way of treating people, how we show up and interact, and dedicating our efforts to work that has real impact in the world. The best experiences we’ve had in business happen when everyone involved shares a deep commitment to the same principles. The worst experiences we’ve had are when one side is driven by a spirit of curiosity and the other is driven by fear.

The Gateway Value

We spent a good amount of time at our company retreat recently talking about our values, and something interesting became clear: curiosity is the anchor value. Without it, the others fall apart.

We have found beautiful synergies when our values are at play: that a culture of curiosity is actually how we can create excellence and it makes being direct a whole lot easier.

We can't be direct if we’re not curious about what's really going on beneath the surface. Directness without curiosity is just bluntness — saying hard things without caring whether they land. But when we’re genuinely curious about what someone is experiencing, directness becomes an act of care. We can get to the heart of the problem because we actually want to understand it.

Curiosity requires safety. It requires the absence of judgment and the willingness to create space for people. When we hold space and get curious, everything else becomes possible.

What's Coming

Over the next several posts, we'll dig into each value: what it means to us, how we practice it, and why it matters in the work we do with clients. We'll share stories and examples. We'll be honest about where we fall short—because that's the other thing about values: they're not a destination. They're a practice. We're always working on them.

Next we’ll tackle that anchor value, curiosity. Stay tuned!