Pretty much every smart firm, if they’re at all intentional about it, examines alignment with the firm’s values as a key consideration hiring, firing, retaining and rewarding people.
These same firms will then go outsource the development labor of every crtitical initiative to a vendor who then gets their contractors from another vendor, who acts as a middle-man to yet another vendor who actually recruits and pays the contractor.
The person building the product then has no idea what your values are, because they’ve never heard of them. Vendors aren’t in the all-hands meeting where the values are unveiled. They’re not evaluated based on your values, and they most likely couldn’t name any of them if their job depended on it.
When leaders then complain that the firms values aren’t being taken seriously, it falls on deaf ears. Because of course they aren’t. The vendors who build and understand the product have their own values that may or may not match their client’s at all, especially if they were chosen for being cost effective.
The answer then, is as obvious as it is unpopular. A critical initiative must be built, not simply administered, by full time employees if it is to have any hope of truly meeting the market’s need and delighting customers.
