The Values Struggle

Without question, organizations can feel naked in the universe of affairs without articulated values, and accompanying vision, mission, and purpose statements. But we should be levelheaded as to how much the rank-and-file truly cares about the organization’s painstakingly drafted values.

The making of culture, which prefigures the organization’s character, requires a purposeful and unceasing people-focused effort throughout the organization. After all, organizational culture is a moment-by-moment proposition given that it’s composed of a highly diverse and highly temperamental band of individuals who can be easily distracted by events, decisions, and actions. As “words on the wall,” values won’t bend the arc of human productivity and are unlikely to affect the way people go about their daily tasks.

Still, an organization’s values are important to articulate — if only because it’s an expectation. It’s certainly true that values and their inspirational brethren (mission, vision, and purpose) have become bedrock components of organizational culture tone-setting. Whether they actually inspire hearts and minds toward creating experiences that contribute to the organization’s overall character is another matter. Yet we labor over their semantics to the point where we convince ourselves of their quasi-sacred significance and importance to the efforts of the organization.

Given this reality, it’s worth exploring values (in the sense of culture-making) a bit further. As mentioned, values set the tone for what’s acceptable, encouraged, and rewarded while also setting in relief the sorts of attitudes and behaviors that would be unappreciated. However, when articulated values come off as trite, rote, or ill-fitting, their usefulness for social cohesion diminishes. That puts a premium on the process to surface organizational values that people of the culture can identify as uniquely appropriate to the work they are asked to perform and the brand they represent.

However, too often arriving at the organization’s official values (as opposed to the informal values that can take root), is a matter of winnowing down a number of virtuous words or phrases that one hopes are relevant, meaningful, and memorable. Having landed on the selected values, there’s an implicit understanding that, of all the multitudinous possibilities, these hand-picked few are what the organization REALLY wants everyone to absorb and exhibit as a member of the team. Unsaid, however, is that many of the values we don’t expressly codify in our organizational charter also matter, so we expect attitudes and behaviors to comport with a host of additional unspecified values as well.

So, values are a thing. But what is the thing behind our organization’s values? In other words, how did we arrive at these particular values? More to the point, how can they become more than just “words on the wall” and embedded into the fabric of organizational culture as affirmations of authentic organizational character? One way would be to reinforce the organization’s value proposition, framed by expectations, along the lines of the following:

• The work we do is important because X (i.e. our “mission”)

• The work we do requires X (e.g., attributes, attitudes, and behaviors)

• Our coworkers expect X (i.e., conduct and mindsets for intraorganizational harmony)

• The people we serve expect X (i.e., minimum acceptable standards for product and service quality)

• The brand we represent stands for X (i.e., our expertise and commitments; AKA, our brand position)

• The value we promise requires X (AKA, the sources, methods, and competence of operational execution)

• The values that underpin these requirements and expectations are Y

Solve for the X’s and you have your raw materials for Y. But such introspection is not how values usually emerge.

Unfortunately, values — along with the companion pieces of vision, mission, and purpose — are usually established by a select group of people who are intimately familiar with the organization’s strategic plan and operational priorities but only casually acquainted with rank-and-file sentiments.

The values-selection process typically involves dialogue, debate, bartering, voting, and so forth. If the values that emerge from these fevered sessions are more than a mere list of commendable nouns (e.g., integrity, courage, accountability, etc.), some wordsmithing takes place with rounds of reviews. The final product is proclaimed throughout the organization, like Moses bearing tablets from Mount Sinai but hopefully with a more receptive populace.

That reception isn’t always equal to the fanfare around which the values are publicized. Most likely, after all this time and effort, employees shrug, say “Sounds OK to me,” and go about their work with the same amount of interest and energy as before. I’ve never been in an organization where employees consider articulated values to be their motivational stimuli (even as job candidates express preternatural fondness for them). However, since values are a guidepost for organizational character, some usefulness at least obtains for sweating over them.

So, who really cares about values? Certainly, leadership and HR, as well as perhaps those who are trying to convince people outside the organization about the goodness that lay within (e.g., sales, public affairs, sustainability, government relations, etc.). Surely that also includes brand practitioners, who understand that credible, authentic, and meaningful organizational values matter for the reputational brand. And, to that point, perhaps it’s easier to think of values as inherent to the brand promise rather than as an artifact of organizational culture.

The Rest of the Corporate Catechism

Of course, the companion pieces of vision, mission, and purpose also earn much attention as identity-forming and character-shaping instruments of culture.

Vision — The organization’s vision is best regarded as the expression of the institution’s ideal reputational state. In other words, a vision is the supreme manifestation of the organization’s brand — encompassing its economic, social, and cultural influence. The vision should be achievable in theory, yet elusive in the quest. Indeed, however it’s expressed, a vision should be an ever-striving ambition that almost moves farther from view the more successful the organization becomes, for growth and scale bring ongoing challenges along the journey to total organizational consciousness.

Mission — The organization’s mission addresses a different cultural component, namely the task at hand (i.e., “what we must do”). A mission statement should stipulate the organization’s operational focus — what its people are collectively aligned to deliver for the duration of the organization’s existence. Typically, the mission is focused on outcomes for stakeholders, with customers usually paramount.

Purpose — The organization’s purpose is designed to serve as a waypoint to guide employee efforts and reinforce the virtue of the work they perform. Unfortunately, purpose statements tend to run into two blind alleys. First, the actual work being performed by and large is too mundane and far removed from whatever paradisiacal realm may be imagined by the organization’s high priests. Second, that paradisiacal realm already has multiple claimants across the institutional landscape. The seemingly infinite variations of “making the world a better place” are well and good, but hardly differentiating for culture-building or external-branding purposes.