There’s a great video on the AMEX OPEN Forum of Tony Hsieh from Zappos on corporate values.
The premise: Values create a common language and way of thinking about the organization. They also provide a clear decision making tool – would this decision fit the values of our organization?
The catch? You actually have to live the values.
They can’t just be words on a piece of paper. They have to be how your organization truly thinks and acts.
I work at a nonprofit social services agency that has been focusing on identifying and operationalizing its most central values. As a faith-based organization, we’ve always operated from a values perspective, but over time we found we had so many values (what was it, 35? I’m losing track) as to be unwieldy and unworkable. We needed to distill the most foundational values and ensure they were woven into our human resources practices, and–as you say–our decison making.
It’s been a great exercise and I encourage organizatations to explore their values and look for ways to implement them in business practices. But I caution, just in case there is any question here: it is not simple, it is not easy, it is not a shortcut to achieving some kind of hallowed ethical standard, it is not a fasttrack to a quick, higher level of transparency. Often, our different values are at odds with each other. Just as in our personal life, the value “ensuring financial security” does not always fit neatly with “spend more quality time with family,” we also encounter similar dilemmas while weighing our core values in a business setting. Living your values is hard work and it requires foundation, discernment, planning, discipline, education, and more.
Thanks for your post and I look forward to other comments and perspectives.
@Krista – I think I may challenge the idea that finding your values has to be a difficult exercise. Values are simply a written form of the things that dictate how you behave as an organization. You’re already living them, even if you don’t have them written down.
I’m also not I’d consider “ensuring financial security” a value. That’s an organizational goal. What’s the value behind that?