Lively Up Yourself: Is Your Organization Living Up to its Core Values?

Core values are those values of an organization that form the foundation upon which it builds its business practices and behaviours. As such, core values help to define corporate culture. Further, core values help organizations to, among others: govern personal relationships; guide business processes; set standards and norms for employees; articulate what they stand for; guide decision making; identify the behaviours that should be rewarded.

All organizations possess a value profile that is driven by a set of implicit or explicit values whether they are aware of it or not. Many companies choose to make their core values explicit because they recognize the importance of core values. As an example, Disney Corporation’s stated core values are innovation, quality, community, storytelling, optimism and decency.

Ask any CEO, MD, or GM what are the core values of their organization. More than likely you will get a confident answer. The response may sound something like: “our values are creativity, innovation, customer loyalty, employee commitment, and teamwork.” Then ask whether the company is living up to its values. The response, I am sure, will be in the affirmative. After all which CEO, MD, or GM will admit that their company does not live up to its values. That would be an admission of failure on the part of their leadership. Then ask whether the company has measures and indicators that allow it to assess whether the company is living up to its values. More than likely, the answer would be no. Follow up with this question: “how then are you able to tell whether your company is living up to its values without any explicit measures and indicators?” Your respondent will likely find him/herself concocting an answer to mask the embarrassment.

Most organizations are quite proud to display a set of core values alongside their mission and vision statements. For far too many, however, this is where it all ends. This truism is evidenced by an often visible disconnect between the core values and the organization’s behaviours and practices. It is not uncommon for organizations claiming to value customer loyalty to experience numerous complaints of discourteous and disrespectful customer service. Customer complaints about a lack of response by managers to their concerns about poor quality of service or products are also quite common, even for those organizations that claim to be customer--centric.

Organizations that tout their employees as their most valuable asset can often find their employees complaining of a lack of commitment to their well--being; a lack of commitment to their development; a lack of recognition from their managers or supervisors of their efforts, even when they go beyond the call of duty. Employees will often say that there is no team spirit – it is a “dog--eat--dog” world, and that co--workers operate independently and in their own self--interest.  The list could go on.

The apparent disconnect between stated core values and organizational behaviour can be explained by a lack of continued and consistent focus on core values by the organization’s leadership. Leadership is responsible for designing and enabling corporate culture and as such must be held accountable for the corporate culture that exists. There appears to be an underlying attitude that “if we state it, it will happen”. Such an attitude is akin to a company stating as a corporate goal, that it wants to grow market share by 15% but undertakes no relevant action beyond that statement. What is the likelihood of success on that goal if no growth strategies are developed and implemented? Can success be achieved if the change in market share is not monitored and measured? Most managers would agree with me that the growth goal would not be achieved. The underlying principle here also applies to core values -- if there are no strategies to entrench the core values and there are no measures to assess progress, the organization will fail to live up to its core values.

Research has shown that business performance is positively correlated to compliance with core values. That is because values drive corporate culture and corporate culture drives performance.   For example, if teamwork is a core value and employees function as self- serving individuals and not as teams, business performance will suffer. Also consider customer loyalty as a core value. If customers are treated poorly, they will take their business elsewhere resulting in decreased sales and ultimately decreased profit.

What is surprising is that organizational leaders do not require a hard sell on the positive relationship between living up to one’s core values and business performance, organizational happiness, and organizational harmony. Yet they do very little to make it all happen. Below are twelve (12) steps that can assist organizations wishing to make the transition to a values--driven institution.

Step 1: Establish the core values needed to ensure the kind of behaviours and norms that will lead to organizational success. The articulated values must empower the organization’s ability to fulfil its mission and vision.

Step 2: Articulate in as much detail as possible the kind of behaviours and norms that is consistent with each value.

Step 3: Establish performance measures and indicators for each value. This will allow the organization to measure the extent to which its members live up to its values.

Step 4: Conduct a values review as part of an internal environment scan. Using the performance measures and indicators identified in Step 3, assess how well the company is performing on each of its core values.

Step 5:  Identify and prioritize the performance gaps.

Step 6: Identify the values requiring significant improvement.

Step 7:    Engage the management team in establishing a values strategy for the organization: establish goals, objectives, strategies and performance targets.

Step 8:    Develop a values dashboard that will allow the organization to get early warning signs about non--‐compliance with its core values.

Step 9:    Communicate and   implement   the   values  strategy   throughout   the organization.

Step 10: Provide the training for employees on the behaviours and practices that are consistent with the values.

Step 11:   Conduct an annual review of value profile of the organization.

Step  12:  Celebrate accomplishments and  reward  employees who   contribute significantly to the integrity of the company vis a vis its core values.

In summary, acting in accordance with core values is a critical success factor for any organization. Core values drive corporate culture and corporate culture drives performance. As such, all organizational leaders should give focus to entrenching core values as a strategic imperative. A failure to act in accordance with core values will certainly create opportunities for organizational dysfunction and ultimately poor performance on a number of organizational metrics - HR, operational, and financial metrics. Given the highly competitive nature of business environments today, performance requires “firing on all cylinders”. Organizations cannot afford internal disharmony or consumer distrust.

Hence organizations that have yet to identify core values, or those that are acting out-of-alignment with their core values must see the need for change. The 12 steps identified above can bring such organizations closer to the short and long--term benefits that will accrue from an alignment between corporate culture and core values – benefits such as improved performance, greater organizational harmony and happiness, increased consumer and investor trust, and long--term sustainability.

Harvey  Millar  is  strategic  performance  consultant,  a  full professor  in  the  Sobey  School  of Business  at  Saint  Mary’s  University,  Vice President of Logix Consultants Limited, and  a  freelance  columnist on business, culture and education matters.  He  can  be  contacted  at [email protected].