Are Your Corporate Values Just Wall-Art For Your Conference Room?
While Mission is the “reason for being” of a firm, the organization’s clearly stated Values are supposed to define critical behaviors, offer context for decision-making and generally serve as bedrock for defining culture. And like Mission descriptions, the Values are often collections of lofty thoughts that are so far removed from the minds and actions of employees as to be nearly useless.
I survey (either in writing or by show of hand) management audiences on the meaningfulness and utility of their firm’s Values. It is rare to find groups where more than 20% are either positive or very positive that their firm’s Values are widely used to define and enforce acceptable behavior. Even fewer individuals indicate having been trained on the meaning and use of the firm’s Values in their day-to-day activities. (Note from Art, take the anonymous 2-question Values Poll in the sidebar here at Management Excellence and see the cumulative feedback from all respondents immediately!)
Four Common Problems and Solutions:
1. Values statements are often generic lists of well-intentioned, positive virtues. There is nothing actionable or tangible to help guide decision-making.
Solution: make the Values as specific as possible. For example, one firm’s “Never let a profit center conflict get in the way of doing what is right for the customer,” is actionable, while a more common variant, “We exist to serve the customer” is not. Sharpen your Value statements until they are tangible, meaningful and actionable.
2. Senior leaders define the Values without employee input.
Solution: defining or revising Values should include input and ideas from across the organization. One way to make the desired cultural and behavioral norms tangible for everyone is to let employees help define them.
3. Values, like Mission statements are viewed as something reserved for a handsome plaque hung in the lobby or a conference room.
Solution: Values should be brought to life through internal education and constant reinforcement. Publicize the reinforcement.
4. Values are not leveraged as a powerful management tool.
Solution: a firm’s Values are incredibly powerful in identifying and selecting new hires, deciding on promotions, resolving conflicts and deciding on proper courses of actions. Teach managers to leverage the firm’s Values as part of their decision-making process.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Instead of frowning at the vagueness of the concept of Corporate Values, recognize that individuals and teams perform best when they embrace their mission, understand the tools and approaches that they should take to get there and have input into defining the roadmap. Strong, clear and tangible Value Statements are part and parcel of creating a high-performance culture.
In the past if I have found the values statements of the company too vague I have tightened it up for my own team. This helps to resolve the issues with the value statement while still supporting the high level mission.
I would encourage managers (and HR professionals) to consider empowering themselves vs. throwing up their hands if they don’t find what they need.
Meg, I completely agree. This can be a great team exercise to work through and the end result is likely a nice alignment around values that make sense….that support the mission. Thanks much for your comment! -Art
Hi there,
I agree with you about the problems with corporate values. I have a different perspective on the causes of the problems. You say that the solution is better crafting of the values statements.
The assumption in most values work is that it is useful to articulate and write values down.
To me, the usefulness in work on values is in the discussion it stimulates. But I think it is a fruitless pursuit to even try to write the values down on a poster or other artefact, and so the solution of better wordsmithing is not the avenue to pursue, in my opinion. I have written about this extensively on my blog. The very act of writing the values on a poster gives the artefact some value in its own right, that I think is misplaced.
Values are global statements of uplifting intention. However, they still have to be negotiated in practical situations in specific circumstances by employees. That is why attempts to get specific about individual situations are doomed to failure. There is no way that the values could anticipate all the potential individual situations that may occur. That is why people tend to go for general statements that you rightly dismiss as unworkable. However, the alternative of putting together specific statements of behaviours that would be demonstrated in living the values is also unworkable.
So what is workable? Discussions about values and specific situations are useful in themselves as they create new understanding of the work people are doing together. They do not need to be written down.
Stephen, thanks much for your insightful and well-experienced comments. I agree with all that you say, with the caveat that I would still write them down. Somewhere. Like Deming, I don’t put much credence in exhortations, and the framed values are the archetype for that situation. Perhaps the medium could be some for of living Values document…(or something more creative). The writing is not where the value on values is created, that’s for certain. It’s in the discussions and in specific instances where they are called upon for help in guiding a decision or evaluating behavior. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you on future posts! -Art