The leaders of many organisations have gone to considerable lengths to elucidate a set of values for their Company and to pledge themselves to running the corporation in accordance with its stated values. Having done this work, often through an inclusive and participative process, they unfortunately stop there. The “Company Values‟, along with their behavioural indicators, are put up on the wall and everyone gets back to doing the business of the business.
For a set of values and their behavioural indicators to be truly inculcated into the fabric of an organisation requires much more than that. This is a process that takes years, not weeks or months. From Schuitema’s experience the following three managerial activities are required.
- Firstly, people need to be helped to make a very clear connection between the Company’s documented Values and their day to day experience in the business. They need to see very clearly what acting consistently with the Values, in the process of performing their job functions, actually means.
- Secondly, the Company’s values need to be fully integrated into the organization’s ongoing management practices and processes.
- Finally, people need to be held accountable for living the Values. That is, there needs to be positive consequences for those who act consistently with the Values and negative consequences for those who do not do so.
Schuitema has worked with two client organisations recently to co-design a very powerful Living the Company Values Workshop.
Participants are taught the difference between Values and Needs driven behaviour, and how Values are put to the test on a daily basis in their workplace. They then develop an understanding of the specific behaviours which accord with each of the Company’s Values.
The core of the workshop, however, is a Values Calibration exercise. Participants review a series of real examples of incidences which typically occur in their work environment. For each example, the following is considered. Which of the Company’s Values are most operative in the situation? What is the correct, as opposed to expedient thing to do in the situation? If the exact / similar situation arose now in the Company how would we act? So what do we need to do differently going forward?
Another client organization has come up with a very innovative way of integrating their Values into their managerial practices. They have decided to make living the Values a standard agenda item at all operational review meetings. Each person in the meeting is to report back on incidents which have happened in their area since the last meeting and whether or not they were handled consistently with the Value which is operative in the situation. The best examples are to be sent through to the Senior Management Team for review. As the leadership of the organization they will then be in a position to track, on an ongoing basis, the degree to which the values are being lived in the business.
The process our client’s have designed is, in fact, a formalization of the Care and Growth practice of “watching the game.”
Many organizations have incorporated their Values into their annual performance appraisal process. A percentage of an individual’s rating, and hence increment, is a function of the degree to which they are living the Company’s Values. Although well intentioned I am not sure of the impact that this has. Firstly the percentage tends to be small – typically 5% of the total rating. Secondly, without having really “watched the game,” it is difficult to make a valid call on the degree to which a person is values as opposed to needs driven. This may be the reason that, in one Company I know of, everyone gets the statutory 5%.
What we at Schuitema would like to see is more examples of people in organizations, not only being censured, but actually being fired for deliberately contravening the company’s Values. By this I mean not only dispensing with the services of those who have been blatantly corrupt or stolen the company’s money, but removing those who have delivered the results, but destroyed the company’s values in the process.
That is, that Executives are fired for their moral failing long before this inevitably catches up with them and the Company’s performance takes a dive. Then, and only then, will values driven behaviour take precedence over expediency in organizations.
This article was written by Wendy Lambourne.