Introduction
Core values define a firm – its people, its environment, and the way it does business. The values a company espouses drive everything that company does; and at Carlisle & Co, our core values define who we are and are part of everything that we do – from interacting with one another and with our clients, to initiating new business opportunities and executing work for our clients. Over the past two years, we made it our mission to revisit our values, to redefine them, and to ensure that each and every one of our team members is creating an environment that embodies those values. It was through this process that we formalized what had long been a driving force in all that we do, our four core values of integrity, partnership, leadership, and excellence.
Now, we have decided to start a conversation with our team to discover what these four values mean to our people. In this first installment, we dig into WHY we chose these four values, asking some of our senior people their thoughts and perspectives. In the next few posts, we will continue this conversation with team members at every level, across the organization, to see what each value means to our people.
Meet Carlisle & Co’s Leaders
Paul Gurizzian | CEO
Paul is Carlisle’s CEO and is responsible for the day-to-day management of the firm
Charlotte Tang | Director
Charlotte leads Carlisle’s data collection, standardization, and benchmarking activities
Jen Cubell | Director
Jen leads Carlisle’s internal professional resources for employee recruitment, retention, training, and development
Korin Hasegawa-John | Director
Korin leads Carlisle’s Strategy Portfolio, for all heavy equipment OEMs
Nate Chenenko | Director
Nate leads Carlisle’s North American and European parts benchmarking activities
Q: Why did Carlisle choose to focus on the four core values of integrity, partnership, leadership, and excellence?
As a tight-knit firm, we take pride in fostering a culture where our employees feel respected, have opportunities to grow and develop, and have a chance to be creative in their work.
Paul Gurizzian | CEO
Nearly two years ago, we re-imagined our internal strategy as a roadmap to 2025. To support this strategy, we focused on formalizing our core values. When I say formalize, I think most of us were unified in our values over the long history of Carlisle, but we had different emphases. Working up and down the organization, we settled on integrity, partnership, leadership, and excellence because ultimately these are the guiding values we need to be successful…for our clients, our employees, and our shareholders.
Jen Cubell | Director
When we decided to re-examine and “formalize” our values as part of our larger initiatives around firm culture, we wanted to make sure we were capturing that which was most important to our employees at all levels and across all areas of the firm. We conducted a number of surveys and held focus groups, in order to make sure that we had input and buy-in from up and down our organizational structure. These core values encapsulate all our conversations around a commitment, first and foremost to doing the right thing; and then also, to making sure that we are (i) working together with our teams and clients towards common goals, (ii) doing the highest level, cutting edge work, and (iii) making sure we achieve the ultimate objective of client delight, each and every time.
Korin Hasegawa-John | Director
The culture committee spent a lot of time as a full team talking about all the different things that were important to us. I think we came up with about 30 or 40 in the first pass. As we discussed all of these important concepts, and people talked about what made them important, we figured out that we could group a lot of them together, and those groupings became the four core values we have today.
Charlotte Tang | Director
We chose these core values to reflect our commitment to both our clients and our colleagues. As a tight-knit firm, we take pride in fostering a culture where our employees feel respected, have opportunities to grow and develop, and have a chance to be creative in their work. This results in the highest quality of work for our clients, as seen through our commitment and dedication.
Q: Are there specific ones that resonate the most with you?
At the heart of all of our other core values is integrity. Honesty and an uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values is at the center of all that we do.
Nate Chenenko | Director
I think about the core values as answering the question “who would I want to work with?” Our core values are actually listed in the order that I think of them, and there’s a progression:
- I only want to work with people who have integrity. Personally, no matter how good someone’s work is, if they lack basic integrity, I’m not interested in working with them. Professionally, if I can’t trust them, I also can’t trust the work they do
- Partnership is next because once I know I can trust someone, they have to be pleasant to work with. Foremost, this means they respect me, my teammates, and their teammates
- Once someone has established that they have integrity and they’ll be a good partner, I want to work with someone who pushes me (leadership) and produces quality work (excellence). I can lump these two together, but they’re only important because we have already established a foundation of integrity and partnership
Jen Cubell | Director
I think at the heart of all of our core values is integrity. Honesty and an uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values is at the center of all that we do. When we are recruiting candidates, it is important for us to be able to speak about who we are, from a corporate-values perspective; and I am proud of and appreciative of being at a firm where above all else, we are committed to doing the right thing.
Korin Hasegawa-John | Director
They’re all important, of course! But I think integrity is the most important to me. Integrity is the one core value that is unconstrained by outside factors. Partnership needs a partner; leadership requires a team; excellence is relative; but integrity is a value that can and should be nurtured by the individual. Because of this, it’s the most exacting of the values and requires the most introspection and effort.
Paul Gurizzian | CEO
As CEO, I think a lot about integrity. We break integrity down into a number of sub-values including honesty, accountability, commitment, and trust. Unfortunately, we live in a time where many institutions compromise their integrity. Integrity is foundational and truly the way that Carlisle distinguishes itself. I can think of no better offer to prospective employees than saying and committing that as a team, we strive to work with integrity each day.
Q: How, as Carlisle leaders, do you foster a culture that promotes these values?
The most important thing is to lead by example. You cannot expect others to do things which you are unwilling to do yourself.
Korin Hasegawa-John | Director
I think the most important thing is to lead by example. You cannot expect others to do things which you are unwilling to do yourself. I try to be open about how I, as an individual, interact with and think about the values. To be honest, this is probably an area for more exploration and better development.
Paul Gurizzian | CEO
It starts with me. The best way to change others is to change oneself.
Nate Chenenko | Director
I spend most of my leadership energy on integrity. This includes a few things. First off, I own my mistakes (this is honest, it builds trust, it proves that I’m holding myself accountable, and it ensures that team members know perfection is not possible nor expected). Then, I take some / most of the responsibility for the mistakes that others on my team make (I assume if I manage someone and they fail, it’s because I didn’t teach them well. This is my starting point). And lastly, I celebrate successes (I put this in integrity because team members need to trust that their good performance will be recognized).
Jen Cubell | Director
The importance of living our values starts at the top, with our leadership. The most critical way to foster a set of values is to live them and to model them. To a person, I have found our leadership to be committed to these values, to living them, and to modeling them for our more junior staff.
Q: How do you measure performance? What does success look like to you in living up to these core values?
The core values are things that we have to continuously strive towards, embody, and consider in our day-to-day thoughts and actions.
Paul Gurizzian | CEO
Good question, as we are in the business of measuring outcomes. I think about this two ways: sentiment and results. In terms of sentiment, we survey our employees along these values periodically, and we surveyed our clients when we rolled out our new strategy. These surveys are a good way to measure perception. In terms of results, we look at employee retention, financial results, and client results based on our recommendations, findings, and their willingness to continue working with us on new engagements.
Korin Hasegawa-John | Director
What I realized is that our core values are intangibles. It’s impossible to measure performance in any of them – which I think is intentional and good. If you can measure something, it’s a goal, not a value. The core values are things that we have to continuously strive towards, embody, and consider in our day-to-day thoughts and actions. To me, success is based on feelings and observations – can I see peers and colleagues referencing and living up to our values more frequently? Are our discussions around embodying the values occurring in the context of our client-facing projects? I hope we achieve the latter on a consistent basis, but it’s a continuous process that requires a lot of work.
Charlotte Tang | Director
Success for me would be happy colleagues who feel valued, respected, and like part of a team. Success is also high quality, accurate, and innovative results for our clients.
Jen Cubell | Director
For me, success doesn’t mean we never fall short; success means I can look at any current or prospective employee and tell them that these values are both our reality and are aspirational. I can speak to any member of our team and feel confident in saying that when it comes to who we are from a values perspective, at Carlisle we do our best to walk the walk.
Continuing the Conversation
Stay tuned for our next piece of the conversation, where we will survey our colleagues across the organization to see how we are living up to the first of our core values: integrity.