Notes from the crossroads.

Where Values Live

Regardless of whether one agrees with a given company’s mission or its leaders’ values, I’m often inspired by those who act on the courage of their convictions — their lived values reflected in how they treat their employees, serve their customers, and operate their business.

An organization’s ability to live its values depends on more than the character or moral premise of its leaders. Behaviors at every level of an organization are shaped and influenced by structure, culture, incentives, and levers, and capital structure may be one of the most important, and most overlooked, parts of that structure.

Earlier this fall, a local operator invited me to tour Chick-fil-A’s Support Center in Atlanta, along with leaders from his two restaurants in the Winston-Salem area. (A disclosure: my husband leads HR and talent for that operator, so I’ve had a chance to witness parts of the system up close for some time.) We spent the day touring the campus and meeting leaders from across the company — from operations to leadership development.

Three things stayed with me.

The first was operational excellence. The building and grounds, the exceptional service, the attention to every detail. Just as striking, the commitment of each employee to their work, wherever their work may sit or whatever it may entail.

The second was harder to measure, but palpable nonetheless. Deep joy. A servant’s heart. And a sense that felt genuine rather than performed. Joy is different from happiness or surface positivity. It is not transactional or dependent upon ideal circumstances. Rather, it comes from within. Light emanating outwards. Infectious in spirit. Deeply relational.

The third was generosity, born of deep confidence. Not in the conventional sense, although Chick-fil-A is a deeply generous company in many ways. Rather, what struck me was their willingness to share what they know, including part of what makes them successful. Not only with their employees and operators, but with their competitors as well. One of our hosts told us about the time Boston Market approached Chick-fil-A, asking about their model. A direct competitor at the time, Boston Market was invited to the Support Center to learn. How many companies open their doors to a competitor?

Driving home, I kept asking what made all that possible. Not just a single decision, but the continuity of values across the entire organization.

Part of the answer is ownership. Chick-fil-A is privately held by the Cathy family, so a values-based decision like closing every Sunday can survive a quarterly earnings call. A publicly traded company might believe in a day of rest just as sincerely and still find it extremely hard to give up a full day of sales every week, year after year. Private ownership doesn’t guarantee principled leadership, any more than public ownership precludes it. But different ownership structures create different freedoms, pressures, and trade-offs.

In the case of Chick-fil-A, while the ownership structure is core, what struck me is how context nests inside context. The family’s ownership shapes the Support Center. The Support Center shapes how operators work. And each operator shapes the culture of their own restaurants.

The balance between those layers is where it gets interesting. Chick-fil-A’s model combines significant central control with meaningful local discretion. Some decisions are held centrally and are non-negotiable. Every restaurant closes on Sunday. Every operator works under the same agreement. And there can never be an intentionally misspelled sign without suggesting that the cow painted or wrote it. But inside that frame, operators have real agency. They decide whom to hire, how to pay, what benefits to offer, and how to build their teams. The core values are held in common, while judgment remains local.

The distributed model can work under different ownership and governance structures, but the strength of the shared core is what makes this particular balance possible. When the foundation is secure, you can afford to give people freedom within it. And on occasion, you can even afford to teach your competitors.

Most organizations don’t have an owner who can simply decide to close on Sundays. Their owners may be dispersed, distant, or focused on the next quarter. Their leaders may hold values every bit as strong and still find themselves constrained by structures and incentives that reward decisions at odds with those values. As I wrote in an earlier note, character is foundational, but not sufficient.

So, the question becomes more than whether an entity or leader courageously lives its convictions. It’s where those values live and the systems that support them.

As you reflect on your own organization, I invite you to consider:

Where do your values live beyond the poster on the wall?

What are the agreed-upon values, and where do people have room to use their own judgment?

Importantly, what does it take to create an organization in which doing what you believe is right isn’t an act of individual courage, but something the system itself makes possible?