CHAPTER 6 IDENTIFY

“Achievements on the golf course are not what matters, decency and honesty are what matter.”

Tiger Woods¹

How do you go about identifying your core values as an organization? How do you do it as an individual leader? The starting point is to start noticing what you do value. The clues are evident, especially during the highs and lows of organizational life, but also at significant decision points. What is it that finally pushes you one way or another when a difficult decision has to be made? In this chapter, we share some of the ways to identify your organizational core values and how you might bring those to life through practical behaviours.

Identifying core values is the first pillar of 31Practices. Core values are the principles which, when followed, lead you towards fulfilling your purpose. Operating in a way that is aligned around core values reduces the experience of stress, whether at an individual level or across an organization. It also enhances the resources and capability that individuals have access to. In this chapter we highlight the impact of identifying and aligning around core values and provide some insight into identifying your own values and practical behaviours.

Have you ever walked out of a job interview with a feeling that, despite the job ticking all the boxes, something doesn’t quite feel right? You might even take the job and enjoy the role when left to your own devices – if only it wasn’t for the organization! This is almost exactly the experience of this hospitality manager when interviewed for a senior management role at a prestigious venue and restaurants location in London, UK.

Sam views punctuality as a basic courtesy. He arrived in good time for the interview, but immediately, there were small signals of the potential values clash: the receptionist was not expecting him, and he waited an hour after the scheduled time before the interview started.

Despite this initial experience, the role which Sam was offered was very attractive – he accepted. Sam remembers arriving for his first day where the pattern of behaviour was evident once again: as before, the receptionist was not expecting him; in fact, nobody was expecting him! He had no office and there had been no communication about his arrival. Business performance success was achieved in the following two years, ranging from gaining a Michelin star for the restaurant to improving annual operating profit by £1 million, but the values mismatch continued. Perhaps the final straw was when Sam’s boss would not honour a verbal gentleman’s agreement regarding a bonus for improved financial performance. At this point, Sam was pleased to move to another role.

In this story, the almost intangible mismatch between Sam and the way things are done in the organization shows up as a sense of discomfort. The experience, in hindsight, shows the organization is not demonstrating a value that is important to Sam.

“Whenever you experience stress of any kind, look into yourself and ask, “In what way am I compromising my innermost values in this situation?’”

Brian Tracy²

INDIVIDUAL CORE VALUES

Consider a different experience, one where you may have been lucky enough to find yourself working for an organization that really fits and works for you – whatever the specific job role you have to fulfil – you feel appreciated, capable, connected. What is happening here?

To start identifying what’s important to you, what your values are, start paying attention to your gut feeling; what are you picking up that you can’t yet consciously articulate?

If we are constantly in situations with groups, individuals and communities where we are required to behave in a way that is out of synch with our personal core values, we will experience stress, dissatisfaction, discomfort, perhaps anxiety and, if left unchecked, ill health.

As human beings, whether we are aware of it or not, we have endless opportunities to adopt a more conscious role in deciding how we want to engage with and respond to our environment. By consciously choosing to live a life that is more aligned with the values that are important to us, and to practise habits of thinking, feeling and behaving that enable us to live those values on a daily basis, there is evidence to suggest that we may well be happier, more satisfied, have access to more resources and have greater resilience.³ Martin Seligman suggests we will find greater happiness through living life according to core values. Such a life can offer greater fulfilment, a feeling of greater personal comfort and a sense of control (Chapter 12, Happiness covers this field in more depth).

For leaders, acting in line with your personal core values is essential to authenticity. Joseph Badaracco,⁴ Professor of Business Ethics at Harvard Business School, writes about the defining moments for executives being those times when they dug below the busy surface of their lives and refocused on their core values and principles – raising the question “who am I?” in order to become leaders in the truest sense. This was the root cause of Tiger Woods’ well publicised difficulties: whilst he had identified his core values quoted at the beginning of this chapter, he later admitted that “I had gotten away from my core values”.⁵ This highlights that whilst Identify is a critical stage, on its own it is not enough. The other steps: Action, Impact and Refine are necessary for values to be lived.

ORGANIZATIONAL CORE VALUES

As an organization, if employees are unable to accommodate an organization’s values or if values are misaligned, there will be strain within the system. Decisions made will not be aligned, communication will be more difficult and there will be tension day to day. Identifying and making use of core values can lead to greater performance success while ignoring the real core values of our organization may lead to a fast demise (see Chapter 2, Values).

Connor O’Shea, the Head Coach at Harlequins Rugby Club in the UK, noted in 2012 that the turnaround in the club’s strategy started with a session at a well-known business school, where they worked to identify their core values as a team and how to “live” those values through the way that they interacted and played. O’Shea points to this shift as making a difference in the team game. At that time, Harlequins had risen to the top of the Rugby Football Union league in the UK.

Many private, public and not-for-profit organizations use a code of ethics, a credo or other long-form description of what they believe in. These kinds of values statements help people to make decisions, and to respect the intent and spirit of their organization’s purpose and plan – particularly when the context is ambiguous and unclear.

Values operate as “simple rules” assisting people to know how to function when there are no specific rules for a given situation. Policies and procedures guide behaviour in organized work. Simple rules guide behaviours in self-organized work.

As a matter of curiosity, what simple rules can you see around you in your organization? For example, if the values in an organization are about intolerance of risk, together with a push for individual achievement, this mix could easily give rise to observable patterns such as:

•     stretching individual performance targets

•     competitive organisational processes

•     people working in isolation (little or no collaboration)

You might also notice:

•     a lack of creativity,

•     little or no individual / group learning

This would be a demanding environment to work in.

It is only by identifying and articulating these values and behaviours that people in complex organizational systems can be expected to align behaviours and create an observable and distinct brand. Similarly, if the values and behaviours are not identified, then there is a tiny, momentary, and only random chance of behaviour being aligned across any significant part of an organization.

CREATING EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATIONAL VALUES AND PRACTICES

There are a number of principles that we have developed to support organizations to articulate their core values and practices – and one additional principle we have integrated through the research for this book. These principles include:

•     Aligning values and practices to the organizational purpose

•     Making value and Practice statements as simple as possible

•     Co-creating values and Practices with employees across the organization

•     Encompassing the seven levels of organizational consciousness

Aligned to purpose

To be truly powerful and relevant, organizational values need to align to and support the organization’s purpose (see Chapter 2, Values and Chapter 5, Purpose). With a clear set of values (principles, traditions, beliefs) that are lived at the heart of the organization and aligned to a clear purpose, it is much easier for people to know how to contribute to success. The result is growth of trust between the organization and all stakeholder groups (customers, employees, suppliers and communities).

As more traditional rigid organizational structures and hierarchies increasingly become obsolete, organizations need a strong sense of purpose and shared values and principles to guide decision making.⁶

As clear and simple as possible

Values need to be clear and simple to be effective, defining your organization and its unique personality. What you don’t want to end up with is a list of qualities associated with any number of organizations. Avoid lists of single words and make sure you clarify the definition and meaning behind each value. After all, we all believe in integrity, don’t we? Most organizations (90%) have “ethical behaviour / integrity” as a core value,⁷ but each organization will have a different way of defining or living integrity in their context. Is integrity listed as one of your values? What do you mean by integrity? What excellent examples do you have of integrity being displayed by those around you?

Co-created across the organization

It’s easy to imagine that identifying and defining organizational values is purely the job of the leadership team. Yet in what business do those on the executive board know all that there is to know about delivery? Values have to relate across the organization, so start from that point – involve people from across the organization.

In any organizational change process, involving a wide cross-section of employees in collaborative co-creation is beneficial and pragmatic. Put simply, if you’re involved in designing something:

•     you take more responsibility for ensuring a successful outcome

•     you’re happier that the decisions made are fair, both in terms of what has been agreed, and how agreement has been reached

•     you gain personal fulfilment

Co-creation involving a diverse group can (if designed well) also avoid groupthink.⁸

At the same time, the leadership team have a critical role in designing and crafting with other stakeholders. They have to believe in, drive and get behind 31Practices. Now is not the time to delegate the strategic direction of the company!

Employees play a co-creation role in the design and delivery of 31Practices in their business at a number of levels.

First, employees take ownership for developing and articulating the Practices right at the start. We cannot overstate the positive impact this has – remember the examples from Chapter 3, Journey, about the post-room employee in New York and his colleagues who still carry their 31Practices card and use the Practices five years later.

Second, the 31Practices created from the values statements act as simple rules, as behavioural guidelines only. Employees themselves decide exactly how they are going to live the specific Practice on any given day. If the core value is creativity and today’s practice is “We enjoy exploring and offering alternative options”, the call centre operator is more inclined to go the extra mile to create the right solution for a customer with an issue, or the learning and development manager might investigate beyond what is already on offer in the organization for a solution to a training requirement.

Encompass the seven levels of organizational consciousness

From the work of Richard Barrett⁹ and his colleagues at the Barrett Values Centre, your values will deliver more when balanced across these levels:

1. Survival – Pursuit of profit and shareholder value: Creating an environment of financial stability, and focusing on the health, safety and welfare of all employees.

2. Relationship – Building relationships that support the organization: Building harmonious relationships that create a sense of belonging and loyalty among employees and caring and connection between the organization and its stakeholders.

3. Self-esteem – High performance systems and processes: Creating a sense of employee pride by establishing policies, procedures, systems, processes and structures that create order and enhance the performance of the organization through the use of best practices.

4.Transformation – Adaptability and continuous learning: Giving employees a voice in decision making and making them accountable and responsible for their own futures in an environment that supports innovation, continuous improvement, knowledge sharing, and the personal growth and development of all employees.

5. Internal cohesion – Strong cohesive culture: Enhancing the organization’s capacity for collective action by aligning employee motivations around a singular mission, an inspiring vision and a shared set of values that create commitment and integrity, and unleash enthusiasm, creativity and passion.

6. Making a difference – Strategic alliances and partnerships: Building mutually beneficial alliances with other organizations and the local community to protect the environment, while deepening the level of internal connectivity inside the organization by fostering internal cooperation between business units and departments.

7.Service – Social responsibility: Working with other organizations and the stakeholders of the organization in pursuit of societal objectives that enhance the sustainability of humanity and the planet, while deepening the level of internal connectivity inside the organization by fostering compassion, humility and forgiveness.

Organizations that purely value aspects at levels 1-3 are too rigid, fear based, internally focused and self-absorbed to be at the top of their game. Too much energy is spent unproductively focused on protecting the self and infighting. Operating with a focus on levels 5-7 means the organization is not grounded in the pragmatic reality of business. When values are balanced across the spectrum, organizations create a climate of trust, can manage complexity, and can respond or adapt to emerging situations.

Supporting you to articulate values and Practices:

•     Articulating values: To achieve your organizational purpose, what are your deeply held beliefs and how do you need to behave? Go beyond the short-term strategies and goals – take a longer-term view.

What are the four or five ways of operating that you cannot do without if you are to achieve your purpose? From Tony Hseih and the story of Zappos, a great way of checking whether your values are really core is the “hire and fire” test. Is each one of these principles something that you would expect to inform decisions about hiring and firing? This kind exploration gives you your value statements.

•     Articulating Practices: For each value, what are the five to seven behaviours that demonstrate this value in action, and are specific to the style and character of your particular organization?

We facilitate creative workshops to generate these Practices. For example, for the value “Impact”:

•     What would be happening if tomorrow everyone started creating impact – what would that look like? What would you notice?

•     What do we consider to be best practice examples of impact?

For the value of “Impact”, an organization might produce some of the following:

•     We deliver what’s needed, when it’s needed

•     We measure our performance to know how much we have improved

•     We think “what else could I do?”, then do it

•     We enable others to deliver excellently

•     We recognize someone else’s contribution – then tell them

It’s possible to generate a set of Practices that can be honed and crafted through a process of employee consultation into your unique organizational 31Practices. Organizations that we have worked with have valued the benefit of our experience and external perspective to facilitate this process.