Should corporate values be aspirational or reflect the way your company actually operates?
Some people argue that if your values aren’t reflective of your actual culture, they’re disingenuous. Other people assert that if your culture sucks, you should aspire (and actively work) to improve it.
Here’s my take: If your culture rocks, your values already reflect that, whether they’re written down or not. And if your culture sucks, it doesn’t matter what your stated values are if you’re not actively working to fix it.
Zappos (who I also wrote about on Monday) believes in this thing called “committable values.” That means they’ll actually make hiring and firing decisions based on them.
What are your organization’s values? Are they committable?
Chris, in the end its about integrity. Integrity to me is about aligning words with behavior. I agree with you that a company can have the best values written down but if the behavior does not match it creates misalignment. Its better to have just a few values that are easy to adhere to even if they are not written down.
Marguerite
@Marguerite – Integrity is such a great word to describe it!
I stopped by your blog – it looks like you just started in July. I like it a lot! How do you like blogging?
I used to think corporate values was a lot of baloney. However, I currently work for a company where we have core values and we really do integrate them into everything we do. It’s not just something we know by rote but know because we refer to them on daily basis when discussing our business and how we operate.
Are we perfect with living our values? No. But I do like that we really try and it does make a difference. Also, our culture/values is known in our industry as being very strong which is a good thing too.
@HRJEFE – I think at many organizations corporate values (at least the ones they have written down) are baloney!
Every organization has values – they’re shown in the way your people carry themselves everyday, and what drives your decisions to hire, fire, promote, etc. Those values may or may not match the ones you have written down on paper and promote to people, but they’re there none-the-less.