The values of your organization are an aggregation of the values of the individual employees in your organization. Would you like to leave the final outcome with respect to your organizational values to chance and let them take a final shape on their own, whatever that might be, or would you like to thoughtfully construct your organizational values by carefully selecting people who believe in and naturally live by the values you would like your organization to possess?
Since the values of your organization are merely an aggregation of the values of most employees, you need to start your thought process by understanding the individual values first. Think about how values work in an individual.
First, values are a mental phenomenon. They establish their base in an individual's mind. Values are essential guiding principles that help you make your decisions. Second, values develop by one having thought about them for a long time in the past, mostly at a subconscious level.
Since the values of your organization are merely an aggregation of the values of most employees, you need to first understand the values of an individual and how they develop in an individual.
So individual values are a mental phenomenon and they are established by repeatedly thinking about them over a period of time. This is important because if you wish to do anything about your organization's values, you now know that it will most certainly involve the mind of the individuals and that they might have firmly established certain values — patterns of thought — in their minds through repetition over the past many years.
Because the process involves the minds of the individual team members and not just your own mind, you cannot merely tell them what to do and expect it to materialize. If as an organization, you have defined a set of core values in isolation and you hope that your people will follow them, that approach might run counter to the way values develop in the first place.
Train yourself
Most key elements in the organization start with you, and values are one of the most important instruments in the mix. It starts with you. Do you genuinely embody the values you want others to follow? Do you think about them on an ongoing basis — are they quite frequently on your mind or do you just bring them up when you must give an official talk to your employees?
“Define the values and they will follow them” is quite similar to saying “Build it, and they will come”. They most probably won't.
Many leaders are adept at creating a financially valuable organization but struggle with creating a valuable life for themselves. The reason is not that they are incompetent at doing so. The reason is much simpler and quite empowering. They just lack training.
It is quite possible that living a fast-paced competitive life, you might not have thought deeply about your values. You might have forgotten to ask — Is this right for me or not?
Ignore everything that suggests values are something you either have or don't. One, that is completely untrue. But more importantly, it suggests a dead end in life. Never accept a dead-end in such matters. You are alive. With training, in almost all cases you can turn things around no matter how bad they are.
Train yourself.
Train your team
Think about a magnetic compass as an analogy. The magnetic needle in the compass rests in a North-South direction when left free of any external force. What does that mean? The needle itself is an aggregation of many atoms, each of which must point North-South in order to enable the entire needle to point North-South. What if the opinion amongst the various atoms were divided?
Just like you took the time to train yourself, take the time to train your team on those values. The crucial element to keep in mind is that you can have a busy regime of such training and yet see no conspicuous result in the mindset of your employees. In such a case, the problem usually lies with the method, the manner or the credibility of the team conducting such training.
The trainers themselves may display no personal commitment to those values. They may not radiate any conviction about their training material.
The ideal situation is for the leader to train their team members himself. When they watch you live by those values every day, your training sessions automatically gain credibility.
Remember this: Unethical = Untrained. Unimaginative = Untrained. Uncouth = Untrained. Uninspired = Untrained. Uninnovative = Untrained.
Train your team.
Train repeatedly
Once you have taken the time to train yourself and your team, the next step is to keep your mind dust-free going forward. If you do not do something about it actively, the external influences will start to affect you eventually. This is less like learning how to ride a bicycle and more like learning to sing or paint. Learning it once is not sufficient. You need to practice constantly.
If you do not do something about it actively, the external influences will start to affect you eventually.
Once you and your team have trained on certain principles of values and vision, you must undergo refresher training periodically. A refresher training need not last the entire duration of the original training. You must go through such a refresher program at least once a year.
Train repeatedly.
Your values anchor
There are many ways to create a financially successful organization. But should you wish to create one that is truly inspiring, you will need a strong foundation of values and a regular habit of Contemplation on those values. To acquire and maintain that strong foundation you need to train yourself, train your team members, and train repeatedly. No shortcuts to this exist, and they never will.
Values are the ideological hooks on which you can hang your product development strategy, fundraising, business model canvas, people strategy, customer service and other elements of your business.
The following is the Adios framework for Organizational Strategy: Values — Non-Financial Vision — Culture — OKRs — Compensation.
It is always better to take the fundamentally stronger road. That road, in this case, is the road of values and vision. You will never go wrong on that one. It might be a little harder and a slightly longer path to where you wish to go. But it will be your road, not a borrowed one. There are many right roads to take, but the one right for you may not necessarily be right for someone else.
Do the right thing because it is the right thing to do.
Discover your own right road.