In a company that truly manages by its values, there is only one boss: the company’s values
Organizational Values seems to be one of the most overused and exaggerated word but it may be least understood by many organizations and the Leaders. There are many Leaders around spending too much time in drafting the mission, Vision or Purpose statements and print a bunch of sheet to put it on everyone’s table or communicate to all simply by email, putting that on website, sticking in the Pantry so that everybody can see it and then announce in the Townhall assuming it is enough. Does this really work ?
In my experience, most of the employees don’t know/remember at all and even if they do then he or she is not at all connected to it and in other words the Organizational values are not congruent to personal values of employees. The reason is, Leaders spend not enough time trying to align their organizations with the values and visions they have crafted. When the Organization starts up it is easy to follow the Values defined by leaders and team members can make the decisions accordingly but when the Organization scale up and since employees waits for leadership team for any decision which goes from top to bottom to be implemented then if anything is unclear it becomes very very slow as everyone has to wait for Leaders to communicate and if I speak in terms of Lean ,the Leadership becomes
bottleneck which was supposed to be catalyst for growth and stimulates Team members energy with their Leadership and the Values which inspires everyone which is possible when there is Organization clarity on their core values which is like a thread around which every decision in the Organization is made right from Talent acquisition to delivery of product and which helps every individual in the Organization on the same page, be autonomous and make the decision independently.
Research from Better up says that Employees who feel their colleague share their Values around meaningful work show a 33% increase in Job satisfaction.
Also Employees who report company leadership as highly aligned on the value of meaningful work show a 33% decrease in Turnover risk.
What are the Core Values or Core ideology ? What is it all about ? They are 3- 5 things in the Organization which you are all about as an organization which are like sacred cow and never touched. The Core ideology is something you discover and not implement. The classic business book by Jerry Porras and Jim Collins in his book “Built to last” which was an extract of 6 years research project by studying 18 enduring great companies and basic essence was that the 2 things which makes any Organization Built to last-
<li>Core Ideology which never changes</li>
<li><strong>Everything else which stimulates progress</strong>. Jim collins mentions that your core values and purpose, if properly conceived, remain fixed. Everything else—your practices, strategies, structures, systems, policies, and procedures—should be open for change.</li>I am mentioning below mix of two process of deriving the core value where first one being famous Mission to Mars to identify core Values followed by Pat Lencioni concept of core value which explains what not core looks and which are three categories i.e. Aspirational Values, Permission-to-Play Values, and Accidental Value.
<li><strong>Mission to Mars exercise by Jim Collins</strong> – If you could only take 10 people to Mars, who would you pick and why? What core values these people adore which makes then an obvious choice. The outcome of this exercise will have list of Core Values </li>
<li><strong>Patrick Lencioni’s The Advantage</strong> – In his book The Advantage he has different approach than Jim Collins and he sees within organizations different kinds of values; Aspirational Values, Permission-to-Play Values, and Accidental Value and this will help to remove few which are actually not core but looks like the core value.</li>Once the Core Values are identified where most of the time is spent the real challenge is to implement in the Organization which inspires most of the employees and help them to be autonomous making most of the decisions themselves and thus be much more effective. So how do we do it and clear the bottleneck as we mentioned before and make everyone aligned to the core values. Jim Collins explains alignment as two step process as below
Identifying and correcting Misalignment – Identifying misalignments means having dialogue with team members , receiving feedbacks from employees to understand what are the obstacles that comes in the way while following the core value and so the first things leaders need to understand the constraint and creating an environment where people can safely and confidently brings the misalignment issues on surface regularly and remove those constraints and realign themselves around the core Value Ex- Regular meeting with Leaders may help individual to discuss the concern and Leaders can help with solutions.
Creating the new alignment – This is more of a proactive approach to ensure that misalignment of the core value does not happen at all and if it is followed in proper manner then it may not be needed to correct the misalignment as it does not exist anymore . It is like Poka-yoke in Lean which makes it impossible for an error to occur. Ex – Having confidential survey regularly for each employees to bring issues on surface for Leaders to know in advance
Above two step process is not something new concept but we do it normally in all the areas but important is to understand Value of the Organizational Values which in turn may stimulate Values of every individual involved and working together to solve a problem and creating various other value for the community and the Planet.
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