Unfortunately, many companies have values that no one can remember or understand.  Even fewer companies have values that people actually live by.

Some leaders believe that just because they have a list of lofty sounding words posted somewhere, they have done something important. But, what should values do besides take up space on a company website?  

What Do Values Do?

I use the term Organizational Character, instead of culture, to describe HOW a company or a team actually operates.  The character of the organization is that team’s demonstrated values.

Please notice, I did not claim Organizational Character was based on a team’s declared values.  The true character of an organization is based on how the people in that organization behave with the customers and with each other.

Values guide every leader and every team. Every leader and every team has values.  The real values of a leader or a team is displayed by their behaviors, not by words on a webpage.  

The question is “Is the Organizational Character of the team aligned with the values the leader claims they have?”

A strong and living set of values describes HOW a leader and a team will behave, no matter the circumstances.

Values provide guidance in four important ways: 

1. What do we stand for?  The time to figure out what you stand for is not in the midst of a crisis.  It is up to the leadership to determine what is most important, before the team or the leader is tested in a crisis.
2. How do we behave? Declaring that we have values does not make them important, if they have no impact on how people behave.  Leaders must use the values to define what good behaviors look like.  Don’t just throw out a word like Integrity or Teamwork and expect everyone’s behaviors to automatically align.
3. How do we make decisions?  Having a defined set of values and a clear understanding on how they impact our behaviors, gives the leader and the led clarity when making difficult decisions.  When we operate without strong values, our decisions become purely pragmatic. “What’s going to work?”  Pragmatism is not a bad thing unless we allow it to overcome our sense of who we are and what we stand for.  If we let our values guide us in our decisions, we can find a way to make things work without compromising our individual and Organizational Character.
4. What can others expect from us?  When we consistently operate based on a set of guiding values, other people will trust our words and our actions.  We will not be settling for compliant employees or one-time customers.  We will have committed teammates and long-term partners.

The Bottom Line:

Who cares what a leader says their team or their family stands for if the leader is not actively engaged in guiding that Organization’s Character.  Values on a website are not enough. Claiming our families stand for something is not enough.

Do we incorporate the values we claim into the day to day leading of our businesses, our teams, or our families?  Do the people we lead even know what our values are without having to look them up?

We can’t expect values to have any value if they remain abstract words we roll out periodically.  As leaders we must know what values are supposed to do for our organizations.

Once we have achieved that type of clarity, we must be sure the people we lead see us living by these values ourselves and guiding the team to have the Organizational Character our values push us to live by.

Question:

Can the people on your team recite your organization’s values?