The conflict of values and goals

Compared to ten or twenty years ago, many organizations put a lot of emphasis on values these days. Many of them also started to work on their "why" (please look here for more details). But what if those aspects come into conflict with people's goals?

The goals will win, especially if there is money attached to them.

So far I have not seen this issue addressed in the broader discussion. It is in my view crucial, however, to handle this conflict in one way or another. Let me share a few thoughts on this here.

Disclaimer: As you can see from my profile this is not an area in which I have ever worked in any official capacity. I am writing about it, because I find it interesting. And I don't want anything be read as blunt criticism or even bashing. The topic is way more complex than what I know about it, let alone cover here. But sometimes an outsider's view also has its merits. All thoughts presented are my personal opinion only.

The approach

When an organization starts working on its values, people are very enthusiastic. A lot of announcements are being made and a top-management sponsor (often the CEO) tells people about all the great things to come. Even as a somewhat cynical person I believe that this is usually an honest attempt to make things better. But a couple of problems kick in and often jeopardize the success.

Timing: Top-level activities mostly have an aggressive schedule and it is not an option to approach this with the attitude of "it's ready, when it's ready". So we end up with many people that need to work on something they have never done before in addition to their regular duties. Even if they really want this to succeed (and not all of them do), how realistic is that?

Bravery: If something does not work out as planned, who will say that to the CEO? Telling truth to power is really difficult. Even if you think of yourself as a nice guy, it still says on your forehead "I can fire you". When I was team lead a couple of years ago I experienced this myself. I had worked with all my direct reports for years, as a member of the same team. And still they all changed their behavior and especially communication in some way.

Over-selling: In order to excite the staff, many "cultural" initiatives do some pretty aggressive internal marketing. That alone is not a problem. But what will happen if the deliverables fall short of what has been promised? Many employees will even anticipate that outcome. So right from the start they do not believe in what you tell them. That likely becomes, at least partially, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

First impression: As the saying goes, there is only one chance to make a first impression. If you spoil the initial experience, because some things are still "rough around the edges", it will have a lasting impact. People will mostly react in an "I told you so" fashion and write off an initiative that was started with the best of intentions.

KPIs/MBOs: My personal favorite. People's career and often short-term financial success almost always depend on meeting some personal goals. Typically such goals come into being by breaking things down from the top. It is an excruciating process and still the outcome is often not great. Because of the sheer complexity it is simply impossible to handle this really well. In other words: Nobody is to blame but the process. Unfortunately no better scalable process has been found yet (to my knowledge).

There are now a few challenges with those MBOs. What if they induce behavior that is not in the best interest of the organization as a whole? Some very large companies (e.g. Daimler and Bosch) have therefore largely removed financials from personal goals for most of their staff; instead the company's overall financial success determines the bonus.

The difficulty

The points above, while all being about different flavors of conflict, lead nicely to the main point of this article: the direct conflict between values and goals. What if the goal to make your quota can only be fulfilled by behaving not so nicely towards a colleague? Would you still be compliant with the value of "respect"?

What determines which path you choose? It is the personal impact. You weigh the consequence of not meeting your goal against how important you as an individual see the company value in question. Example: If you are completely indifferent towards the feelings of a colleague you never met in person before, you will not hesitate for a split-second to screw this person over. But if you have made it one of your principles to treat others like you want to be treated yourself, it is a completely different story. The core question is: Is the company value also one of your own personal values?

The organization now needs to think about what it can and wants to do about this potential discrepancy. Simply mandating values over goals is not practical, of course. At the end of the day the purpose of the organization (commercial or non-profit) needs to be met. Plus it would be a very comfortable excuse if I could simply bring up a conflict with any of the values as the reason for not meeting my goal.

The opposite (goals over values) is not an option either. Because it would mean to abolish the values. A value that you ignore at the first sight of conflict is not a value, it is a very shallow lip service. And beware, the staff will look very closely how such situations are handled at and down from the top. Any statement, or more importantly action, that can be construed as "goal over value" will be understood exactly so. Because, quite frankly, it is what people somehow expect.

As with so many other things the solution lies in the middle. In German we have the saying "the tone makes the music". It means that how something is done is just as important as the outcome. So in order to reach my goal and still respect the company values, I could reach out to my colleague and discuss my conflict. If people know the background, the same action can cause a very different reaction. (And this person will owe you.) In many situations, however, it will not be that easy. That is when things need to be escalated, i.e. be made someone else's problem. There are of course practical limits, but it is certainly better than the alternative.

The approach

How is it possible to move a large organization towards values? Or to rephrase: How can we make people embrace corporate values as something that delivers a personal benefit to them? The last sentence already hints to the stimulation that I think should be preferred: the carrots and not the sticks. If at all possible a positive reinforcement works much better in my experience. Plus it has the added benefit to fall into the category of working towards a common goal, rather than trying to avoid personal blame. (If you want to learn more about that and many other fascinating things, watch this video as a starting point.)

The other thing I suggest is to not run this as a "traditional" top-down initiative. Those are very similar to what is called the waterfall model in software development. There you have a planning phase before things start, then you gather requirements, and from those a solution is designed and finally implemented. The problem with the approach is the assumption that after the requirements gathering phase you really understand the problem domain. Yes, you will hopefully know more about it than before. But are you aware of the exception from the exception at the forth technical level deep down, and what it means for the business side?

You can't find out all those details upfront. It is not efficient and even with unlimited funding and time, the risk would still be high to miss something. Plus requirements change over time and you would have to start all over again, while the market has moved on. In software development the waterfall model is now seen as the main culprit for many failed large-scale projects.

As a result agile software development has risen over the last twenty years. By acknowledging the need to gradually work your way into a problem domain, you stay flexible. Change is expected and welcome, and therefore an essential part of the approach. Also the rise of Microservices can be seen in this light. By limiting the scope, you reduce complexity and gain agility.

Why can't we do the same with a project that aims at organizational change? We learn along the way, and people feel as part of it because not everything seems to be set in stone already. Interestingly there is a video by Gary Hamel why classical change management so often does not work as expected.

In closing

A lot more could be added here. But it is a Sunday afternoon and I think for today I have spent enough time on the subject. Plus, quoting me to myself, it is often better to work in incremental steps. I am pretty certain that I will have more ideas what I can write about this area. Please let me know if you are interested in something particular.