In my coaching training, we are currently doing some heavy work on values. Everyone has values, even if they don’t give them any thought. Values are usually formed in childhood and for most people they’re subconscious. I’m also currently working on some company values (well, ‘principles’, actually).
Most companies default to professing “shared values” when they want to communicate what they’re about. But are values dreamed up in a board room ever really “shared”? And can a company even have values?
You can observe a culture and see clearly what is valued there. It’s usually the ‘rules of survival’, how to get on there.
The behaviours that are rewarded and sanctioned – who gets promoted and what for, who gets fired and what for – tell you pretty much everything you need to know about a culture.
In a truly values-led organisation, those things are coherent with the professed values on the posters on the walls. In many organisations, the reality is not that simple, and would make for a rather messy mural with a lot of caveats. In a ‘toxic’ culture, employees may see colleagues being ‘rewarded’ for behaviour that is opposite to those values on the wall. The resulting expectation vs. reality gap, if sustained over time, will likely lead to a talent exodus.
I have experienced cultures where the real values do align with the posters on the wall. One was a manufacturing business. To say safety was a life or death issue was not an overstatement. And when an employee reprimanded me for standing on a chair to take a photo, I saw that safety was a deeply embedded value (and that also I was unlikely to get my personal ‘adventure’ value met at that company). In that way, if they are true, ‘values’ can be a helpful determiner of whether candidates may thrive with you, or not. They can help people self-select out of the process, if your values are off-putting, or contradictory to their personal ones.
So if work is done to really discover what the culture actually values (rather than just what they say), and that is something leaders are willing to put on the company website, then yes, maybe a company can hold ‘shared values’.
But it’s still my least favourite way of talking about what a company stands for, and here’s why. This might get a bit semantic for some people’s tastes, but then semantics matter when you’re expressing what really matters in as few words as possible.
“Shared values” misunderstand how humans work
Values are one of the most sacred parts of our identity. Given that our values are mostly shaped before the age of seven, to demand that new recruits sign up to and share the company’s values is a bit Orwellian for my taste, and I think shows a fundamental ignorance of human psychology.
Homogeneity is not a good business strategy
Even if you were to find a group of people who did actually share the company’s values (a likely impossibility), what would it be like to work in a team where everyone cared about exactly the same things? You’d have groupthink in the extreme, and a disaster for innovation.
Values are too static
For me, values are just too passive for the job that many companies intend them for. Values – like integrity, respect, communication, excellence – tend to be nouns. Nouns are words for things, objects. They are stationary. They do not force action or cause positive change.
They’re often ‘table stakes’
Values like Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Integrity often appear high up on lists of corporate values. Yet I think those should be ‘table stakes’; the minimum requirement for employment – at any (decent) company. They are not going to motivate your people to achieve more, to achieve something of unique value.
What’s the alternative?
Generally, I prefer the ‘call to arms’ of a verb. A doing word. Something active, that galvanises movement.
To choose the ‘classification’ I think about what we’re trying to articulate, and what we want them to do for the culture. Here are some examples of where I’ve seen it done well:
Tenets > defined as a principle upon which a belief is formed, these are foundational statements that the organisation holds to be true, and that guide the work. Helpful if you want to align your people to a particular approach or way of doing things. I like Herman Miller’s.
Behaviours > one of my clients wanted to send clear messages to the employee culture about what it takes to get on well here, and to build those into performance management, so we went with ‘behaviours’.
Positions > as seen at Public Digital. Longer, for sure, but thoughtful, and fully considered – appropriate to the work they do and understood by their clients.
Principles > I suggested this approach for a client because it does two connected things: communicates what they stand for, and acts as ‘guiding’ principles for how they do things.
Not an exhaustive list, but all good names for the ‘things’, depending on what you want to do with them.
(You can always drop me a line if you’d like some help in creating something of real ‘value’.)
