To facilitate this, they have an interesting set of questions that you can answer for yourself :
- What do you stand for ? Why ?
- What do you believe in ? Why ?
- What are you discontented about ? Why ?
- What brings you suffering ? Why ?
- What makes you weep and wail ? Why ?
- What makes you jump for joy ? Why ?
- What are you passionate about ? Why ?
- What keeps you awake at night ? Why ?
- Whats grabbed hold and wont let go ? Why ?
- What do you want for your life ? Why ?
- Just what is it that you really care about ? Why ?
Just try it – at the least, you will know yourself better. :-)
Just got me thinking that we have such an action oriented culture in most companies, that spending time doing an activity like this would generally be considered a complete waste of time. And then we wonder why we don't see more leadership in our people in organizations. Peter Senge, in his book “The Fifth Discipline” refers to this as one of the learning disabilities of organizations : the illusion of taking charge – alluding to the propensity that most of us folks have of jumping headlong into action as the panacea for all ills. But perhaps, slow at times is fast.
As per Kouzes & Posner again, research confirms that organizations with a strong corporate culture based on a foundation of shared values outperformed other firms by a huge margin :
- Their revenue grew more than four times faster
- Their rate of job creation was seven times higher
- Their stock price grew twelve times faster
- Their profit performance was 750 percent higher
If the data is so overwhelming – why then are exercises in unraveling personal values and hence finding shared values, not an extremely prevalent practice in today's corporate world ? Afterall, what are values – but our deepest beliefs and convictions. Do people not know or is it just intellectual laziness or is it the attitude of saying : “Oh yes, we know that” (As in – yes we have read all about moto-biking, we know it now !!).
I suspect the answer lies deeper. Most visioning and value exercises are done by a group of senior management folks in an out-of-office break out session. The output is then canned and delivered to everyone in the organization for absorption. But can values really be forced ? And so the inevitable happens – and after some lip service, the whole exercise dies a quiet death. And the next time someone refers to it again, there are knowing smiles and someone says : “Oh yes, we know that” !! Things like company vision & values are often brushed aside only because more often than not – they remain as just slogans decorating walls.
For shared values to emerge, the only way then, is for it to be painstakingly forged, which means the exercise of arriving at it needs to be more widespread with a much larger representation. If people across the organization are involved in arriving at it, if they feel heard and involved – I believe visions and values can be a very effective tool in forging alignment. For shared vision and values to thrive though – there has to be a culture wherein the apex leadership has an ongoing dialogue with employees on living the values & rewarding it.
Its not for nothing that the devil resides in the execution !! ….. till then, the attractive statistic remains just that – a promised land, but too difficult to get to for the vast majority. For old times sake, pulled out and had a look at hp's iconic Rules of the Garage – values put down by Bill Hewlett & Dave Packard.
In retrospect, I wonder : would it not do hp a world of good to go back to its roots ?
Posts
1 comment:
The root cause for this is "lack of time and patience for anything other than numbers" on the part of most (actually all! can't think of one company which works differently)of the organisations. People are running harried to meet their forecast commits made in the previous telecon, to ensure they dont get bashed in the next telecon. So what happens over time, is that, most of the people are chasing numbers while some of them are "strategising" and mostly these two are never in sync! Its high time (especially post the slowdown when everybody is rebuilding their plans)that organisations go back to redefining their values by engaging with employees across the pyramid and by encouraging them to collaborate at all levels, so that every one is motivated to work for the common cause.
Post a Comment