The Value of Values

 I’m a big fan of Values when it comes to the business world. Corporate values combine with a company’s Vision and Mission in order to codify what the company is going to achieve, how it intends to achieve it and what code of conduct it will exhibit in the doing. When done well, these three aspects work together to determine the direction the company is taking and give clarity to customers and employees alike. 

The power of values is that they give a shared framework of ethics to base decisions on. This needs to be a truism regardless of the consequences; maintaining the values should align with the vision of the company, regardless of short term commercial considerations. If you hold true to your values, you will move closer to your vision. If you have the right vision, commercial success will be the outcome of achieving it.

Without this commitment values are not values at all and in the worst cases they are eventually revealed to be lies. 

I suspect being a ‘nerd’* has some impact on this. I like values as they provide me with a clarity that eases decision making. I have a lot of difficulty when being told to act against company values in terms of the outcomes of a decision I need to make. In leadership positions this is even more problematic, as I’ve been required to advocate for decisions made by superiors which I know to contravene the values the company has. For me this equates to being ordered to lie. To my shame, I tried to do this earlier in my career, always to my eventual cost. It is with hard learned experience that I know that holding true to your values, both personal, and corporate, can be the most important factor in maintaining a positive mental approach to the working environment. 

In business I’ve seen a number of companies disregard their stated values because to maintain them would cost money. Often the leadership of the company would rationalise the decision to act against stated values, by reasoning that the value was being followed but in an esoteric way. 

An example I was exposed to can best be summed up with the following sentence: ‘We can’t be ‘Customer Focused’ if we don’t exist, therefore this action which penalises customers, is being Customer Focused.’ 

The logic being given was that the continued existence of the company was needed for Customer Focus to have any meaning at all. Some of you reading this will no doubt agree with this logic, but the reality is that it wasn’t the existence of the organisation that was at stake. Rather it was the positions of the people making the decision. It was hitting or missing a revenue target that was the primary driver. If the targets weren’t hit, then the leadership of the organisation may well have been removed. It may also have precipitated a re-structure of the company meaning others would have lost their jobs. Maintaining the company’s profit level was simply more important than providing a customer focused response. 

Now, I’m not stating that this decision was correct or a mistake in these circumstances. What it definitely was not was in line with the company’s Values. It acted against the core ideals that the company should hold dear in order to achieve its vision. Whether the decision was right or wrong is aligned to whether the company had the right values. This beggars the question of whether the company vision was right or wrong, or was this too simply a lie. Did the company’s actual vision boil down to “Hit revenue targets regardless”, as opposed to the objective as told to customers and staff?

The impression this gave to staff (I was not alone in my disillusion) was that the actual value was “Profit focus”, and that I think whilst it may not have been as inspiring to a collection of nerds, having this as an actuarial value would at least have been honest.

And I think this is the power that values truly have. When adhered to they promote honesty and trust between all members of whatever organisation is involved.

*Note - For me, “Nerd” is a term of honour and affection. I like nerds regardless of what it is they are nerds about. A nerd is a person who has the courage to not care about the perceptions others have of them. I learned long ago that some people will judge first and be curious later. I didn’t really care about the judgement of others, even when that led to bullying and being laughed at. Whenever I tried to fit in it simply felt wrong; a lie. I was only ever comfortable being what I am, and that is very much a nerd.