Values, the troublesome middle child of culture

The 3Vs of organizations pt 2

May 08, 2023

Update May 11, 2023: This article posted May 8, references Karl Icahn’s comment on values - I used it because of the wordplay potential. There’s good news and bad news.

The good news is the cosmos still has a sense of humour. The bad news is it’s at my expense. I just now read a May 4 article in the Economist that raises doubts about Karl’s ethical values. I haven’t amended my comments below because I refer to “his values” without adjudicating them or claiming they are ethical values. Still the karma was too good not to share.

Colour my war

You probably have an opinion on the Second World War. If you have Nazi values, it got off to a promising start, had a so-so middle, and a disappointing end. If you have democratic values, it was a just war, won by the (mostly) good guys.

Everything is ambiguous without values. Values are ideals that give significance and meaning to our experience of the world. Applying different values to the same circumstances produces very different results.

In the previous post I said that vital information is the most powerful of the 3Vs of corporate culture, vision, values and vital information. But that’s only because it’s where the real vision and values of the organization are embodied intentionally or not. The values, as they are embodied, define and drive our organizations. They even decide what the vision will be.

So, vital information is the most powerful, but values are the most important. They are also the most misunderstood because we see their effects but we have to dig hard to find the values themselves.

In this post I tackle values as economically as I can but it takes me longer than normal so you may want to get a coffee before continuing. To get you moving, a picture of a much younger me proudly displaying a darkly humorous award from the staff of a division I headed at the time.

Photo not nearly as shown. Only award remains accurate.

Icahn but I don’t

Venture capitalist Karl Icahn is reputed to have said that he wants two things from his people, good results and good values. If they don't get the results he wants, they get another year to try. But if they don't have the values he wants, he fires them immediately.

Does predator capitalist Karl Icahn really believe that? Do any of us if we are honest? Or do we secretly believe that, while life would be easier if other people had better values, anyone with an ounce of sense knows that values have no application in the real world other than to be trotted out during interviews and on Substack by people with nothing better to do than post on leadership and management.

Do values-led organizations exist outside of TEDx Talks by tenured professors? Values are best left to – and at – corporate retreats because they seriously compromise performance. Sometimes the more earnest and naïve among us start to apply values but then a big opportunity or threat presents itself and values go wherever New Year’s resolutions go. Threats and opportunities are to values as dryers are to socks. It was ever thus and must be ever so.

Values are the good china brought out for tea with an elderly aunt known to be revising her will. No sooner is she out the door than you are burning your fingers peeling back the corner of a microwave dinner in the sinister flicker of the flat screen in the rec room.

At least that’s what we think about when we think about values in the privacy of our own head.

But, if rapacious corporate raiders really are interested in values, maybe we shouldn’t be so hasty.

Values, not just for good people

I hesitated to use the word “values” because it sounds like I am about to urge you to be a better person. I am not. I am about to urge you to see values as unavoidable at least and useful tools at best.

Despite all the pious talk (or because of it) we often regard values as tiresome and unrealistic exhortations of the preaching classes. Even the young Augustine prayed to live a moral life, “but not just yet”. However, values are not the preserve of the sanctimonious. It is the preaching that is tiresome, not the values. In fact, many values have nothing to do with morality.

It’s been said that “values are only valuable when they are getting in the way”. It’s true that a value can only be said to be core when we will forgo something desirable, such as fun or profit, to maintain it. But values don’t just “get in the way”. They also guide the way. Values are like the banks of a river, without them the river and the organization bog down, literally and figuratively respectively.

Values have assumed greater prominence in Biz Lit today because they are one of the few ways to counteract the centrifugal forces the Ideas Era has let loose on organizations. But they are equally adept at tearing them and whole nations apart. That’s how powerful values are.

Values led organizations

We in the West take nation states for granted. The state has been the primary political organization since at least 1815 and is the fundamental unit of the United Nations. But values are severely testing the state system. Donald Trump is not the leader of “Trumpism” but its banner representing a set of values oppositional to liberal values and national institutions. I’m not sure there’s a coherent political philosophy to Trumpism but it is a values-led movement. I know that’s not a term commonly applied to Trump but I’m discussing the strengths and weaknesses of values in organizations, not promoting particular values. As long as that’s understood we can proceed to the next paragraph.

The first job of a state is to control the use of force in its territory. In the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, well-armed militias compete with states for sovereignty. Jihadist militias are values-led organizations – regardless of what the West thinks of their values. They not only rival weak states they are occasionally capable of attacking, or inspiring attacks on, strong ones.

Values-led organizations – the ones we love and the ones we hate, be they jihadists, sports teams’ supporters, grassroots political organizations such as the Occupy, BLM, and MeToo movements, the Arab Spring, ad hoc charities, and street gangs – demonstrate both the strength of values as organizing principles, and the weakness of relying solely on values. The fervour of true believers is unmatched in the ranks of salaried employees - though it is possible to be both at once - however, organizations built solely on values are often as amorphous as values themselves.

In many countries, such as Syria and Libya, the fluid nature of jihadist activity suggests that it is often more useful to highlight jihadist “networks” than it is to analyze them as formal “groups.” 1

All of which is to say, values are a powerful tool neither to be despised nor depended on. Movements collapse when enthusiasm wanes or a more exciting idea comes along. Cohesiveness and longevity require institutions and bureaucracies that embody the values that called the organization into existence.

Values, a good place to meet, a great way to lead

In the Ideas Era context is fragmented and command and control less often applicable, so we need other coordinators for our organizations. Values are great context coordinators, especially among today’s knowledge workers. This doesn't mean the ideal organization will have no rules. Some values are so fundamental they ought to be embodied in rules and the other items listed from 1 to 7 on the chart in Management’s Job Was Never Harder and its Tools Never Softer.

The gaps between the rules will be filled by management and leadership – ideally with consistency.

People look first to Management to define vision and identify values. In The Ideas Era Part 1, Over the Threshold I quoted a survey of CEOs that compared the top 5 skills of managers in 1980 with the top five in 1996. Although the survey asked about managerial skills, Skills 5, 3, and certainly 1 of the 1996 skills require an ability to impart and embody shared values.

In a fractal organization senior management is actively engaged in a continual process of defining all three Vs. But this is not just the province of senior management. In the large organizations lawyers and HR professionals are or ought to be values leaders, confirming and challenging as required. Ultimately values are everyone’s responsibility and the vital information about values will be reinforced or repudiated by leaders within the organization. A family friend’s son transferred schools and, on his first day, saw another new kid getting razzed. One of the seniors passing by stopped it simply by saying to the razzers, “Hey, that’s not what we do here.” and then welcoming the new kid to the school. That’s leadership, defining vital information and that’s how values are embodied in the culture. Values are ideas. Fundamental to leadership, certainly enduring leadership, is a sense of shared values.

(If you’re a new reader or a forgetful one, I regard leadership and management as entirely seperate but equal. Leadership is ideas influencing people’s ideas. Everyone can and does do it on occassion. For my personal definitions of leadership and management read The Murmuration in Your Organization Part 3 )

Shared values, healing and binding

Many seemingly irreconcilable disputes can be settled, or at least the people reconciled, by examining the values behind their positions. (I’m borrowing from Getting to Yes2 which urges negotiators to look “at the interests behind the positions”.)

It is surprising how often shared values manifest themselves in different ways and people fail to recognize potential areas of agreement or at least mutual respect. One of the exercises I deployed in my public sector values class involved role playing. I divided the class into two groups. I designated one group as highway engineers and the other health care professionals. They were told there is $100 million to spend on either highways or medical facilities. They cannot divide the money.

It is disturbing how quickly a fictional situation creates factual hostility. The “engineers” were treated like dinosaurs by the “medical” group who smugly “care more about health than highways”. Tempers flare and discussion breaks down. I’d then intervene with statistics showing that improvements in vehicles and highways – the work of engineers – had saved an astounding number of lives. But it was sometimes too little too late and and any collaboration was grudging. However, on one memorable afternoon, early in the discussion, an “engineer” responded to the usual medical taunts by saying that engineers have saved more lives through good design than all doctors and nurses put together. Someone in the “medical” group expressed doubt about the purported statistic but conceded that a well-designed highway can reduce death and injury, and the groups quickly saw that they both valued human life.

They never agreed on who should have the money but, with the moral high ground levelled, they were able to discuss how best to spend the money. As we ran out of time, they were exploring conditions under which the medical people could support the highway involving proximity to emergency services and various design features.

What are some examples of values?

We know that moral values determine right and wrong. Honesty is a moral value, as is respect for life. There are many values that do not necessarily have a moral aspect. Here’s a partial list of values:

· Open-mindedness

· Ingenuity

· Tolerance

· Independence – acting without regard for authority

· Respect for authority

· Being liked – affection seeking

· Loyalty – duty to friends, colleagues, and family

· Honesty

· Creativity

· Reliability

· Consistency

· Efficiency

· Self-interest – looking out for yourself “because no one else will”

· Altruism

· Compassion

· Competitiveness

· Positivity

· Passion

· Courage

· Perseverance

The list is open-ended. Threads Culture lists 500 core values which may seem a bit extravagant for core values, but they are offering a lot of options. Helpfully, they have divided them into four groups: Results, Competition, Teamwork, Compassion. Have a look.

What do values do?

We opened with World War Two. More prosaicaly, consider two salaried employees, Bert and Louise, coworkers as they separately leave the office. Their very demanding boss wasn’t around and there wasn’t much that really had to be done that day. Both consider it a great day.

Bert, who sees his job as a financial transaction where he turns a profit when he gets as much money for as little effort as possible, considers the day great because the morning passed quickly, discussing last night’s game, followed by a nap at his desk, a long lunch, and culminating in a pleasant chat with the newest staff member who is a definite improvement over the recently retired Mrs. Frumpster. It was a great day for Louise too because she was finally able to get to those files that have haunted her desk for weeks now and, in the process, created guidelines that will help her whole team be more productive and, to her way of thinking at least, happier. Money is important to her but so is teamwork and a sense that her contribution matters.

The same circumstances, the same great day, but very different results for the company because of values – his, hers, and the company’s.

Louise and Bert spent their time differently because they have a different hierarchy of values, not better or worse values - though more and less productive from the company’s perspective. But Bert makes the same calculation about the company as it makes about him. Their values match. It is Louise who is out of step at work.

By the way, how did you picture Louise and Bert? Values get two cracks at us. They not only tell us what’s important in the world but also shape how we perceive and imagine the world. What if I told you that Bert spends his off hours as a dedicated volunteer addiction counsellor?

Values tell us whether to work late tonight, go home to the family, or go to a bar to try to forget about work and family. They bind people together and drive them apart. When they do this surreptitiously it only enhances their power.

Northup Frye said that a thought isn’t a thought until we articulate it. In the broadest sense we articulate values through our words and actions but I don’t think that’s what Frye had in mind. We often make values decisions - honesty, loyalty and reliability - without articulating them. But articulating the values behind what we are thinking and doing brings clarity. When I was a senior manager I placed a premium on collaborative values. That’s good, right? Yes, but I didn’t articulate it to my management team in values terms. So, it was interpreted by some as indicating I didn’t want to hear anything negative about team members however justified. In one instance, a bad situation festered for months in one division before I learned, quite by accident, about a pattern of intimidation of staff by the director - the very opposite of the behaviour I valued. I realized belatedly that I had to make a greater effort to explain my goals in value terms.

Now what?

Deliberately identify desirable values. But be sure to connect the grand to grind by answering two questions in respect of each identified value:

· What behaviours does this value require and what do they look like so we recognize them in action?

· What are we prepared to sacrifice and what are we not prepared to sacrifice in order to maintain this value?

You have to really dig deep so prepare to ask and answer many subordinate questions in the process. Remember the Norwegian ski team didn’t stop at agreeing to be good sports; they asked if they’d give a pole to another country’s skier even if it meant losing a medal.

Each value you identify will produce different answers. They should; not all values weigh the same, and each of them weighs differently in different situations. Values conflicts are inevitable. This is a good thing because it leads to a fuller examination of what really matters. People will throw up situations that will affect which value prevails. Where do open mindedness and independence yield to respect for authority for example? I may be biased but it should have a lot to do with whether your organization is in innovation or replication mode. (I explain what I mean in The Org Chart Is a Half Truth and the two posts that follow it.)

Everyone plumps for honesty at first. But there are circumstances where honesty is not the best policy. What is the correct answer when an adoring 3 year old proudly presents you with a drawing she made of you?

If you are in sales, what is the correct answer when an important client asks what you think of a rival product? What if a too helpful answer will result in layoffs at your company? What about performance appraisals? When I was reviewing a struggling employee, I found being economical with the truth more constructive than a complete litany of shortcomings.

If you are in business, you might be prepared to sustain losses for two quarters but not indefinitely in the name of collegiality and loyalty. You might be willing to contravene a municipal bylaw but go out of business rather than commit an indictable offence.

If you work for a government, what controversy are you willing to withstand? Which circumstances require whistle-blowing? What if it contravenes collegiality?

What options exist that make it easier to maintain a value at a lower cost? I always reminded civil servants that, if they have a concern that they are being asked to do something illegal or unethical they should raise it with their Attorney General counsel and then it became the AG’s problem.

I end with the public service because it looks like my next instalment will be on the convergence of private sector and public sector values.