Last week I co-hosted (with Organisational Development Practitioner Brian Hunter Young, who designed and mostly led the session) an online event for ODN Europe exploring how strategy and agreed values get diluted in everyday practice, and what we need to do in practice for values to be consistently enacted.
Pretty much anyone who’s ever worked in an organisation will have some experiences of it falling short of their stated values, or values not being evident at all, in how it conducts itself.
This is what Chris Argyris and Donald Schön, in their book Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness, describe as ‘Espoused Theory’ versus ‘Theory in Use’ (‘theory’ here referring to the mental maps, assumptions and rules that people in organisations hold).
Much of the ‘Theory in Use’ that actually guides people’s actions is outside of conscious awareness; the ‘Espoused Theory’ that they are consciously aware of, and that comes out in the explanations they give of their behaviour, tends to be used after the event to make sense of what they do. Brian describes this rather more succinctly as ‘Say versus Do’.
From conversations with Brian, and what came out of the structured discussions participated in by the OD practitioners who attended, here are some ideas about how to make sure that organisational values are actually carried through to action.
1. Only have one set of values in the organisation! A long time ago the consultancy I was working for at the time did some ‘internal branding’ work for an insurance company after a merger. We put a lot of time into interviewing people in different roles and various levels in the company, asking them what they felt was important about what they did, to feed into a process of establishing ‘internal brand values’ that epitomised the best of their culture.
Following George Miller’s ‘7±2’ rule, we grouped the main themes from the interview responses into 5 or 6 values, and set about running internal branding workshops to build these into the culture.
Unfortunately, the Operations department was already vigorously promoting four ‘values’ aimed at ensuring efficiency, which led to all kinds of complications as we attempted to explain how the new values fit with the existing ones. In the end, the ‘efficiency’ values that were already in use won out.
2. Keep the final values set simple and easy to understand. First mover advantage wasn’t the only reason that our values set didn’t capture hearts and minds in that insurance company. It turns out that ‘7±2’ items, especially concepts, are actually too many for busy people to keep in mind. In practice, it’s more like 3 or 4. Even now, three decades later, I can still remember the pre-existing values (‘Cost, Care, Speed, and Ease’). I can’t remember any of the ones we elicited.
3. The values should support each other. It emerged from the examples given by participants that the values used in his case study (Trust, Honesty, and Compassion) do support each other beautifully.
Without compassion, ‘honest feedback’ can degenerate into abusive criticism. Without trust, we won’t see honesty or compassion in others even when it’s there. And without honesty, ‘compassion’ becomes performative and won’t be trusted.
4. When defining what the values should be, get input from everyone involved. One way to do this is to do appreciative interviews with people across the organisation (definitely not just senior management) about their best experiences of working there, with particular focus on what is important to them about that experience. This will bring out some of the values that they feel strongly about (more about how to find the other values later). When people have input to the identification of organisational values, rather than having ‘values’ imposed from above, they will feel more like engaging with them and bringing them to life.
The ‘Wholeness Principle’ from Appreciative Inquiry also suggests that involving everyone in developing the values will lead to a more robust end result. No one person knows everything about an organisation – certainly not the leadership team, far removed from the realities of the front line, and not external consultants who are only there for a short time.
5. Left as just words, values don’t make good performance indicators. Values like compassion, trust, and honesty are abstract concepts, which by their nature can mean different things to different people. An employee might think they are fulfilling a value, while their manager, working from a slightly different definition, might think they are falling short.
To be trackable, values need to be translated down to specific behaviours. At the same time leaders should recognise that values can be fulfilled in many different ways in different contexts. New translations may need to be explored if the organisation’s circumstances change.
6. To bring the values to life, people need an answer to the question “How does this affect the work that I do?” Again, this can’t be answered from above. The only people who can meaningfully answer this for each role are the people doing the actual work, and their immediate supervisors.
Exploring the question ‘What does this mean in terms of the work you do?’ in partnership with employees translates the value down into observable behaviours, so that everyone agrees on what the value means in the context of the job they are doing.
6. Make sure the values set covers everything. Sometimes, values are not properly fulfilled in action because another, unstated value gets in the way. In the case study we used in the event, the value of Compassion was supposed to be revealed in action by, for example, managers providing space for support and wellbeing, What started to happen was that time pressures shortened those conversations.
Why was this happening? As you’ve probably guessed, there was something else that was important to managers, that unspoken value being ‘getting the work done’. It wasn’t part of the ‘espoused theory’, but it was definitely present in the organisation’s ‘theory in action’ as a tacit, ‘taken as read’ – and maybe not even consciously thought about – motivating value.
How to deal with this apparent conflict and make sure that espoused values are not overpowered by unspoken motivators that are of equal or greater importance in the organisation’s culture?
First, bring them to the surface. If getting things done is important to the organisation (which it will in most organisations), make it explicit in the value set so it’s not lurking in the shadows ready to override managers’ best intentions.
Secondly, consider each how the behaviours flowing from a particular value might evolve under the influence of another value. If there’s an apparent conflict between the two, explore ways of fulfilling both. For example, “How do we show compassion when there’s time pressure?”
Rather than settling for a compromise where you’re a bit less compassionate and tasks get completed slightly later than usual, assume that there will be ways of fulfilling both compassion and getting things done. That assumption will make it much more likely that you find a resolution that satisfies both values.
ODN Europe have a number of other free online ‘deep dives’ coming up, plus some face to face meetups, and if you’re at all interested in Organisational Development (and you’re in Europe) it’s worth becoming at the very least an Associate Member (it’s free!).
Would you like to be able to use and facilitate Appreciative Interviews confidently? A new Practical Appreciative Inquiry facilitator training starts soon – at the time of writing you can save $100 early booking discount when you book before 15 July.
- Small-group course (maximum 12 participants)
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“Since this course I’ve been using the Appreciative Inquiry interview technique in one to one leadership coaching and group sessions with fantastic results” – Jo Murfin, Leadership Coach, People Strategy, Governance, UK
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