Values Don’t Matter - But What We Value Does!

Wait, did a leadership guy just say “values don’t matter?” Yes, in terms of how we generally approach values. Read on if you’re curious.

You will be hard pressed to find research in the Organizational Design/Development world that doesn’t outwardly examine or at least make a strong nod towards values and culture. The general prescription we get is that values shape culture and culture shapes outputs (i.e. productivity) and outputs lead to outcomes.

I am all-in on the concept that values are at the core of organizations. But (because there is always a but in a blog post) … my concern is that values get cast as a set of prescriptions, an input to the system, that, if right, will make for a healthy, productive organization. As long as people have the instructions - values posters, norms statements, principles of conduct, etc.- people should be able to “value” the way we need them to and our culture will go from icky - toxic in the worst case - to awesome.

How’s that working for you? 

Did that revised list of organizational values (with a catchy acronym and cool info-graphics), that effort to identify desired behaviors instead of platitude adjectives, or that retreat (with bold conversations and honest reflection) lead to something different?

My personal experiences embedded inside organizations as a staff member and dancing at the organizational boundaries as a coach and consultant don’t affirm this approach. Too often the rhetoric does not match staff’s experience and how they feel about the culture and themselves.

And there it is, the answer to my own frustration doing this work and trying to understand the challenges we have been having.

This “values” stuff is not about the rhetoric and commitment to a set of actions. It IS about how people are experiencing their lives while engaged with the organization and what we think/believe about that.

So, what happens when we approach our work around values not as a set of prescriptions for people to follow, but rather as a set of intended outcomes we work to achieve?

The first conundrum we face is what do we mean by “values as a set of intended outcomes?”

To get there, we just have to revisit some key questions we do ask, but with vigor and rigor we don’t always stick with:

• What do we hope following a set of values will make possible for people?
• How do we describe what we want people to be experiencing while engaged with this organization when all those values are followed?

We need to hold the space for these questions for as long as it takes to agree on what we value about people and their actual experiences.

In asking what having a set of values or norms makes possible and for whom, we are ultimately getting at what experiences, beliefs, and behaviors we think are important for all people to have. This is what people need to personally experience in order to achieve the organization’s desired community benefit. (*note that there is no distinction between staff, client, community member, board member, CEO, receptionist, legislator, … that’s because equity demands that we consistently hold what we value to be true for some people to be held true for ALL people)

This is an inherently empathetic view of values and culture. The measure of success is not the specific behaviors we hold ourselves accountable to, but rather the outcomes/responses those behaviors elicit in others.

In other words, we start with clarifying what we want people to feel as the fixed point of reference as opposed to the specific actions we take.

This approach allows for agility and accountability. Rather than being tied to a specific list of actions or behaviors, we tie ourselves to how people are experiencing their lives within the organization. If we need to alter a behavior to ensure the desired experience, we have permission, and an obligation, to do so.

With regard to accountability, we shift from “did you follow the rules/behaviors” to “did others have the desired experience we value in response to your actions.” If not, what was it about the behavior that failed to lead to the desired outcome for the people involved and what would it take to successfully create the valued outcome?

Culture is in the eye of the individual. It is how that person makes sense of the experiences they are consistently having and observing around them over time. They are constantly judging the intent of others AND the outcomes their behaviors have on the people around them – with outcomes generally outweighing intent since they are the realized experience a person has or sees.

For this reason, we need deep agreement and clarity around the desired experiences we want people to have within our organization AND then commit to making those articulated experiences the priorities that matter most within the organization.

Ask ourselves,

• What do we value about people and the experiences they are having when they come in contact with this organization? (Valued Outcomes)
• Do we agree on these and do we have a shared language that people understand that describes what we value? (Healthy Culture)
• Are we willing to ask if people are actually experiencing the valued outcomes? (Assessment)
• Are we willing to ask what it would take for them to actually experience these outcomes? (Intent)
• Are we willing to ask what it is that we do that leads to alternative/un-valued outcomes? (Risks)  

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