Perhaps contrary to popular opinion, defining and exercising your organizational values is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal as a leader of your organization.
Workplace values set the tone for your chamber or association’s culture, and they identify what your organization, as a whole, cares about.
With the world we live in today and examples of great leadership examples scarce, it can become hard to stay true to the values you set as an individual or as an organization. Whether it’s pinching a value here, extending the truth there or lying just a little bit to justify the ends, it takes an extra dose of courage to resist compromising your core values especially in these hard times. When deciding to discredit your values in order to get ahead as an organization, you need to keep in mind that when you weaken your values it is only harder to get them back.
Remember, it was Johnson and Johnson, after the Tylenol Scare of 1982 who decided to do the crucial and right thing by removing all Tylenol bottles from store shelves all over America. The move cost them 100 million dollars. This decision was famously decided based on the company’s number one core value: to take care of their customers no matter the cost. Johnson and Johnson would later be rewarded for this decision with the groundbreaking foil cap innovative, a strong financial recovery and decades of customer loyalty. Originally, CEO Robert W. Johnson, JR in 1935, wrote out the company’s core ideology in a document called “Our Credo,” which listed the company’s responsibilities. The first being: responsibility to customers. This value was written nearly 5 decades before the scare, and yet it has held up through the test of time and guided Johnson and Johnson through challenging times!
We must understand that ethical dilemmas and choices are unavoidable parts of our jobs as leaders. Additionally, jobseekers should investigate the values of an organization and the specific chamber or association they may want to join first to better understand the culture of the organization.
Sometimes for organizations that promote good corporate cultures and values, a re-evaluation of what the organization believes in or stands for can help refresh staffs’ memories and embolden leadership to stick to their ‘true north.’
Recently, we completed a values assessment with an organization. Over 95% of the organization completed the assessment with 90% of respondents saying values were very relevant to relevant in their job. It’s not surprising that we are living in an era where corporate and organizational values are scarce or at the very least not publicly on display or demonstrated, and yet we have a growing population yearning for those very organizations to embody key values as a core mission.
Values help us make decisions. Having values in your organization gives structure and guidance to how you operate. Values can help the board and staff frame their discussion and decisions. We make our best decisions when we have core values to lean back on.
When an organization is in sync and shares the same core values there is less second-guessing when the question comes up on how to do something or deal with a situation (like the Johnson and Johnson example above). Shared values also create a sense of community and belonging when like-minded people work together to improve the work environment.
Direct Application:
Then the question becomes, now that we have our core values identified, how do we cascade that down the chain to every last person in our organization. Here are a couple of thoughts we’ve seen over the years:
Values in your strategic plan: Perhaps this is the easiest one, but there should be time to discuss and expand upon values at your yearly retreats and strategic sessions. Recently, at a retreat that I was in, as the values came up for discussion, all of a sudden some of our quietest board members shot up and began engaging. “Were these the board’s values, the staffs’ values, the organization’s values and could we impose these values on our members?” And, “at the very least could we remove a member if they didn’t demonstrate our core values like inclusion?” See, values can be exhilarating!
The optics of values - Do not miss the chance to win the “low hanging fruit” of visible representation of values. Values should be above the organization’s doorway forcing every single person to walk under the values daily. Values should be on posters throughout the organization with examples of what exercising those values looks like. Values should be on every board meeting agenda and on every staff agenda. Values should also be on the committee charter, etc. A couple organizations I’ve done work with went as fair as to have values booklets printed and left throughout the organization, at staff lunch tables, in waiting rooms so everyone could see and read them. Visible cues are important to human beings. And, if you do have to do behavioral modification – e.g. a staff member broke a couple of the core values – then you can always sit down with them and say, “you acknowledge and validate our values every time you walk through the door of this organization, so how did this behavior correlate with the values. Is this behavior representing the values you see everyday?”
Values in performance reviews: You want your staff to know how seriously you take the organization’s values, put a values metric in their performance review. Create a rubric where up on top are the core values. Below that is the person’s name and as you go across the row under each value you can fill out (+) He or she exhibits the core value most of the time, (+/-) Sometimes he or she exhibits the core value and sometimes he or she doesn’t, (-) He or she doesn’t exhibit the core value most of the time. As Gino Wickman points out in his book, Traction, “What your leadership team has to do is determine what the bar is. The ‘bar’ is the minimum standard you will accept…”
Praise for demonstrated values – It is equally important to create a reward or praise system within your organization for people who epitomize the core values. We don’t celebrate enough in organizations! This is easy and fun and creates a bond with employees. Create a ‘happy dollar’ campaign (give out dollars for values in action). Let someone nominate someone else for a values award. Make a value of the month. Or, create a video testimonial of employees and how they demonstrate your organizational values day-to-day.
Deciding to hire or fire based on values – Earlier I mentioned that we have to realize how powerful values are. Mission tells us who, what, where, why and for whom we serve. Vision tells us where we’re going and how fast. However, values tell us how we make decisions as an organization. Decisions on who to hire; decisions on who to fire. Have you ever heard the expression, “I just don’t think you’re the right cultural fit.”” They’re talking about values! “We don’t think you embody the beliefs and core values this organization stands for.”
In Built To Last, author Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras spent six years researching organizations that have endured through recessions and depressions for decades. One of their key findings was that in every case, these organizations defined their core values in the very early stages and built a culture of people around them.
Recognize the power in organizational values. Find a way to walk in those values daily and it will only heighten those values. Remember these words from the “Tylenol Man” himself, Alan Hilburg, “Values-based brands outperform non-values based brands on trust, credibility and ‘listenability.’ In other words, great companies and great brands stand on a platform of great values. In a crises I’d rather defend the values than the facts.”