People who love where they work share a common set of values with the organization. They are engaged and inspired to "go the extra mile" because the work that needs to get done matters to them.
I'm providing leadership consulting and executive coaching for the CEO and executive team of a new media company. The lead generation team was tasked to create the organization's values statement. The senior leaders and employees work hard and love to have fun. One of the five values is Fun Matters. " Hard work at Trouve nets you a night of bowling in Las Vegas while wearing a green velour tracksuit and a bright orange wig". Values at this company are put into action!
Are your organization's values put into action?
“Organizations have to have values. But so do people. To be effective in an organization, one’s own values must be compatible with the organization’s values. They do not need to be the same. But they must be close enough so that they can coexist.” – Peter Drucker, Management Challenges for the 21st Century (1999)
“Aligning values, strategies, and management practices may be simple to understand and simple to talk about, but it is very difficult to actually implement.” – Charles A. O’Reilly & Jeffrey Pfeffer, Hidden Values (2000)
All organizations have a mission statement and a set of values or guiding principles. They include such items as Integrity, Customer Service, Quality, Respect, High Performance, Teamwork, Leadership, and Innovation. Often these words are prominently displayed on plaques, posters, banners, laminated cards, and even screen savers.
But when values are ignored and people don’t live by them, they have no meaning. Worse, the business culture becomes hypocritical, and employees lose respect for the organization and its leaders. It is one more reason people disengage from their work.
When values are put into action, however, people feel energy, enthusiasm, and the drive to go beyond the mediocre. When people connect to company values that resonate with their own personal beliefs, they have even more commitment, higher productivity, and better engagement with customers. The end results show up on the bottom line.
Leaders have to take personal responsibility for their organization’s values and for making sure their people share in a common set of principles. This is not an easy task. It is one thing to agree with lofty words and ideals; it is quite another to translate ideals into action. A leader is accountable for ensuring that people not only know the values, but also put them into practice.
“We judge ourselves by our intentions. The rest of the world judges us by our actions.” – Eric Harvey
Are you leading with clear values?
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