Tweet

Pathways and Pitfalls to Clarifying Organizational Values

Guest post by: Jim Clemmer

Article Overview: Effectively using values to care for the context and provide focus to a team or organization has two major steps: 1) clarifying and prioritizing shared values; 2) living and behaving according to those aspirations. Both can be very difficult leadership acts.

Pathways and Pitfalls to Clarifying Organizational Values

"If the 'Know Thyself' of the oracle were an easy thing, it would not be held to be a divine injunction." - Plutarch Effectively using values to care for the context and provide focus to a team or organization has two major steps: 1) clarifying and prioritizing shared values; 2) living and behaving according to those aspirations. Both can be very difficult leadership acts.

Here are some ways to clarifying and prioritizing shared values:

• If your management team hasn't developed an explicit set of core values, this is the place to start. Here's what you're after:

o Three to four words or short phrases (five words or less) that you can use as "verbal pegs" to cluster or summarize many of the related values at the top of your values hierarchy.

o Words or short phrases that are easy to understand and meaningful to your team and organization.

o Broad understanding and ownership of the core values by everyone on your team or in your organization.

Your team's shared values should represent a blend of those principles from your past that you want to preserve and the beliefs that your team will need to share as you look to your preferred future. Looking at the past respects and builds on your organization's heritage, successes, and strengths. It helps to turn resistance to change into confidence and energy for facing the future. To look at future values, you're examining the underside of your team or organization's vision. To make the picture of your preferred future reality calls for a different set of priorities about what's really important.

Debating and developing your core values should follow the development of your shared vision. Values clarification can be a painful process. But it doesn't have to be long and drawn out. If you have a skilled facilitator lead you, it's common to have a rough version of your team's shared values words or short phrases within a few hours. That's because shared values aren't created they're uncovered or articulated.

• Once your team has developed your core values, we've found the following exercise is a useful way to further debate, try them on for size, and start management teams into the most important part of values - living them. You can break into three groups or do this as a large group brainstorming and discussion exercise.

Here's the exercise using three groups (for the large group discussion, do these in the same way and order): 1) One group brainstorms a list of ways to visibly signal each value to the rest of the organization. These must be specific such as "meet with our distributors to get their ideas and feedback". Not motherhood generalities like "communicate better." 2) Another group discusses ways that the team and/or individuals on the team, often inadvertently violates each value. 3) The last group looks at ways the team and individuals on it can get feedback from others in the organization on how well they are living the values.

Now everyone gets back together to hear and discuss each group's perspectives. Action plans and next steps conclude the process.

• Unless you're trying to build an old-fashioned command and control organization culture, you need wide debate, discussion, and ownership of a set of shared core values. This consensus building process can take a fair bit of time and energy. It's usually best combined with discussions of the organization's vision, and an outline of, or invitation to input to, the organization improvement plans and process. Some organizations have started with blank sheets of paper and invited the dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people throughout their organization to articulate the organization's core values.

We've found that to be a slow and inefficient process. It's rarely worth all the extra work of gathering, consolidating, reviewing, summarizing, debating, and finally deciding on core values. We prefer a cascading process that starts with senior management and moves down through the organization. The values are presented as being rough or in a draft form. If they need further refinement or clarification, that's a useful output of the participative process. However, be careful not to just tack new values or ideas on the end. If you get beyond four words or short phrases you no longer have critical, core values. You now have a list.

As you try to articulate your espoused or aspired values, don't allow yourself to fall into the trap of "we're not living this way now so it can't be a value." Like visioning, you're trying to describe where you want to be. Once you know what you what to become, then you can work on making these lived values.

Related Articles
  Board Development
  Comfort Zones
  Clarifying the Strategic Focus
  Truths for Introverts Who Sell: What We Don’t Need To Learn The Extroverted Hard Way – Part Five
  What makes your values so special what did you say they were again
  What We Get is What We See
  You Get What You Reward
  5 simple steps to achieving and maintaining Organizational Clarity
  Creating a Culture of High Performance
  How great leaders use values to drive performance
  The Importance of Organizational Cultural Values
  Idea of the Week A Clients Thanksgiving
  Seven Drivers of Organizational Success
  Eight Excellent Cultural Values to Reward In Your Organization
  Take control of projects with PMP certification
  Customer Service Starts in Selling
  Developing a Team or Organization Vision
  Warning! Values May Be Detrimental to Your Organization’s Health
  Here's How To Live Your Life Money Values
  Bringing Values to Life

Article Tags: leadership
Referred by: http://www.searchengineworkshops.com



Related Forum Posts
Re: Essential Leadership skills - Vision Values Mission Strategic Thinking Decision Making Communication Team Bonding People Development Coaching / Mentoring / Guiding / Grooming Presentation Thanks Robert
HRPreneur - Hi everyone, I am new to the forum and I recently started my own Human Capital (HR) consulting firm called HRPreneur Inc. HRP focuses on making human capital a strategic differentiator for SME's. Below is a summary about HRP; Who We Are: HRP is a Human Capital consulting firm with 30 years of experience that becomes an extension of your company by providing a full array of services to help you create a highly engaged workforce focused on achieving strategic results in order to build a long lasting great company! Mission: HRP provides small and medium sized businesses a Strategic HR Business Partner to increase employee engagement, resulting in cost savings, increased productivity and results at an affordable rate! Vision: To inspire and warrant SME's reach their full competency! Cost Effectiveness: We provide over 30 years of experience at a fraction of the cost at a strategic executive HR business level You will save between 50% to 60% in costs per year on salary, bonus, benefits, training, office space alone We will provide you additional cost efficiencies through our services Services: • Strategic Human Resources Planning • Organizational Redesign • Change Management • Organizational Culture Development • Employee Engagement Programs • Leadership Assessment and Development • Compensation Design • Talent Acquisition • Assimilation and On-Boarding • Performance Management • Talent Management & Succession Planning • Human Resources Due Diligence • Human Resources Audit • Full Service HR Outsourcing


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

3 Key Factors For Raising Capital

How to Conduct a B2B Marketing Content Audit

How To Be A Management Legend

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.