Top Values as chosen by Fortune 100 companies:
- 55% integrity
- 49% customer satisfaction
- 40% team work
Many organisational leaders today decide to develop a set of organisational values simply to keep up with the Joneses – everyone else has a set so we must have one too! – When this approach is adopted, typically politically correct values are chosen that bear little relationship to how things actually happen in their workplaces. Current research puts the three perennial values above as top favourites. Taking values off the shelf in this way can mean that managements fail to recognise the crucial need to define how each value will play out in terms of supporting behaviours in their unique organisational context. Without such clarity, employees are left to decide for themselves whether the organisation is genuinely concerned to nurture a values-based culture or whether it’s just another iteration of management spin designed for PR purposes while how things get done inside reflects a very different set of rules.
Such management hubris unaligned, as it often is, to the performance management system debases values, breeds employee cynicism and sets organisations up for future reputation outages.
The fundamental reason why progressive organisational leaders spend time in defining their organisational values and equal amounts of time in aligning their organisational systems to support these values is that they are well aware that people want to be part of an inspiring story of organisational purpose and worth rather than being confined to narrow job functions. Managing by values is the inspirational antidote to runaway compliance regimes but if they get co-opted into an industry conformance regime then both leaders and followers end up being short-changed.
So, when next you hear of an organisation – or even your own organisation – espousing their values, ask yourself the question “is that expression of unbridled ecstasy real or fake? Words or actions? Or is it both in unison?”
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