ESSENTIALS MANAGEMENT These “3 Ps” may not be the entities you choose to deifne and describe, but it’s critical to choose your nouns before you champion the adjectives that you want to embody. For Lawson, that gets to the distinction between values and culture. “Culture is a word that Silicon Valley and startups everywhere toss around all the time,” says Lawson. “What does it really mean and how does it relate to values? “What I landed on is that culture is living your values.” Values are written words, and your culture is how you actually live those written words. THE THREE STAGES OF YOUR VALUE SYSTEM So how do you actually live your values? Lawson’s framework has helped his team both articulate Twilio’s values and help them abide by them every day. “It’s at this point that most companies’ values go astray. Many startups relegate them to posters and drink coasters,” says Lawson. “Our values are in motion, speciifcally through a three-stage lifecycle that gets us to the next stage of growth. First, we articulate our values, then live them and ifnally, test them.” ARTICULATION To start, your goal is to articulate, not create your values. “It’s not semantics. You cannot create your values. You cannot sit down and say, “Hey, what words sound good?” because that just makes them false,” says Lawson. “It just makes them empty words. You cannot create your values. I use the word ‘articulate’ very intentionally, because I believe all you can do is identify who you are through introspection and then pull out and articulate the things that you like.” Be aspirational but know that the seeds of these values must already have been sown. “This is where timing comes into play. You should articulate your values not too early and not too late,” says Lawson. “Don’t establish your values right atfer you’ve just incorporated. Your company is not mature enough; it’s people, product and process are not known entities. But don’t do it in the company’s twilight years either.” It’s not unlike the teenage years. The hard-earned realizations and character-deifning mistakes haven’t happened yet. ”Humans need to go through the teenage years to discover themselves, to get comfortable in their skin. I believe more startups actually go through that process as well,” says Lawson. “You have to give it time to bake in order to know who you are as a company. But if you wait too long, then the values can go off in their own direction and you may not like what you ifnd when you ifnd them.” 98