Along my leadership journey, I have had the privilege to work at companies at different stages of maturity. I often look back upon my time at the first startup I worked at. There were no more than ten people, passionate about the company, products and the goal of taking the technology to the world.

In the early days, we didn’t think of defining the values of what was needed to be a successful member of the team – we were like minded people, spending time inside and outside of the office together. A funny thing happened along the way, we grew to be four hundred people and one day it became clear that we had lost something along the way. This showed in our results as well, as we had the painful part of the journey where we had to downsize as we could not sustain the results. It wasn’t until we started to rebuild that we formalized our vision and values, looking back to the early days to codify what values those startup team members had.

So, when to introduce values? Introduce the values as soon as possible, looking within your team to understand the behaviours and characteristics that will be needed to be successful. Doing this exercise may prevent the painful lesson of downsizing, or even worse ceasing operations.

This not only applies to business. Take some time out as a family unit to discuss what will distinguish your family from others and what your families “DNA” will be.