The Power of Three: Why More Than 3 Core Values Doesn’t Work

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We’ve all read dozens of articles giving us eight things we can do to be a better leader or parent or person.

Most of them seem like good tips. By the time I read three or four articles, I have a list of 25-30 things I am supposed to do to be a better leader. And that’s after just a few days of reading.

Maybe you are one of those people who can remember and do 25 things at the same time. If so, more power to you. I am not one of those people.

I’ve learned The Power of Three. It’s simple. Most people can only remember and act on three things at the same time.

It’s an important concept. All too often we give people a list of four or more things to remember and act on—and then wonder why things don’t work as intended. It’s much better to stick to 2-3 things.

If your organization has more than three core values, you’re probably not getting the alignment, performance, engagement and productivity that you could.

Let’s be clear. It is possible to memorize lists with more than three items. What people can’t do well is remember and act on more than three things at the same time.

A little story. I was doing in-depth interviews with managers at a company about a variety of topics including their culture and values. The company had five core values. As part of the interview, I asked each manager if they knew the company values.

Out of 60 interviews, only four managers knew all five values. Those four managers were close friends who worked in the same regional office.

What about the other 56 interviews? Everyone remembered 2-3 values, but at four values, retention dropped off a cliff.

In a later part of the interview, I asked each manager what leadership principles they thought were most important. In almost every case, the corporate values they remembered were the same as the leadership principles they shared.

The point is that people can only remember and act on a maximum of three things.

You can give people 10 values if you want, but they’ll likely remember and act on only 2-3 of them. Giving 100 people five values means that you’ll get 100 different versions of 2-3 values that each of them remembers and acts on. Instead of developing a consistent, unified, high-performance culture, you’ll get mush.

If you have a list of more than three things that need to be accomplished, layer them. Choose the 2-3 most important items to learn and then, when you are very good at them, add in the next layer of 2-3 items.

Take learning how to drive a car. When I was teaching my daughter to drive, I didn’t start her on a busy freeway or even a residential street. We didn’t work on steering and speed and navigation and…

Instead, we started in a large parking lot. For 30 minutes, all my daughter did was take her foot off the brake and put it on the brake. Brake on. Brake off. She wasn’t allowed to touch the gas pedal. When we ran out of parking lot, she was allowed to turn the car in the opposite direction.

She focused on just two things: braking and steering. Lesson One in driving was all about getting that first layer, that foundation, put in place. When she got good at that, we went back to that parking lot and she was allowed to use the gas pedal.

She focused on getting good at 2-3 skills for one layer before we moved on to the 2-3 skills in the next layer. Over time, we added layer after layer, 2-3 skills at a time, to make her the safe driver she is today.

People can remember simple lists of more than three things, but people can only remember and act on 2-3 things at the same time.

If your organization is pushing more than three core values, consider improving your culture and performance by consolidating them into three. I recommend the core values of Seek Wisdom, Practice Love and Get Results. For more on that, check out my blogs on Wisdom and Practicing Love – Getting Results.

That’s the Power of Three.