ORGANISATIONAL VALUES

THE VALUE OF  ALIGNMENT

Defining the credo of a business by Jayashantha Jayawardhana

Employees below ‘C-suite’ level usually have no input; they’re fated to live by such values during their period of employment without questioning them.

Even if this is far from ideal, it’s still much better than flaunting organisational values that sound grandiose but are no more than a public relations exercise. They look and sound fantastic in business literature such as annual reports, coffee-table books and the organisation’s website but hold hardly any meaning as they’re rarely meant and mostly pretence.

When your organisation’s values are defined, you should pay serious attention to values alignment – if that is, you want your business to live by them and consider them to be integral to the successful execution of your organisational strategy.

Therefore, the value of such values is an important and interesting field of study.

Paul Ingram and Yoonjin Choi are both organisational scholars, and corporate consultants with extensive experience in the field. They published an article in the Harvard Business (HBR) titled ‘What Does Your Company Really Stand For?’

They explain: “When you create values alignment, you reap all sorts of benefits: higher job satisfaction, lower turnover, better teamwork, more effective communication, bigger contributions to the organisation, more productive negotiations and perhaps surprisingly, more diversity, equity and inclusion.”

Such values alignment is extremely important today; because for years, cultural and economic changes have compelled organisations to reassess what they value in their relationships with employees, customers and society at large.

Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic and a renewed sense of urgency relating to issues of social justice have galvanised those endeavours. Across industries and sectors, enterprises have been compelled to ask themselves what they stand for, and what binds them to one another and the community. The need for values alignment will only grow as employees search for meaning at work, and select careers and jobs on that basis.

To think clearly about the alignment of values, it’s essential to identify the difference between values and beliefs. The former relates to the principles of evaluation and determine whether someone perceives something being as good, bad or important. Simply put, values are the ends you pursue.

Meanwhile, beliefs are the paths you trust will lead to those ends. Ingram and Choi propose a five step process to build a foundation for values alignment.

WORKERS’ VALUES They suggest taking as many employees as possible through a process that Ingram devised. Going through it, people put a finger on their top values, work out the relationships among them and create what is called a ‘values structure.’

It represents the eight values that are most important for an individual and the interdependencies that person discerns among them. For instance, someone may believe that pursuing excellence will help to satisfy the value of achievement.

By having its people construct a values structure, the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College found that the most widely shared values encompassed creativity, integrity, excellence and joy.

KEY PRIORITIES This is the top-down part of the process where you must identify what’s most important for your organisation’s stra­tegy to yield the best results. This will help you align your official values with the organisation’s mission.

But it must always come second because handpicking values in view of only the strategy won’t work well most of the time.

VALUES WORKERS After comparing the summarised results from the first step above with those from the second, you must identify what they have in common. They needn’t necessarily be the same but must produce multiple candidates to make value statements.

The caveat here is that these should strike a chord with employees while being integral to implementing the organisation’s strategy.

VALUES SHORTLIST Have your people weigh in on the shortlist under the third step above and rank them according to their preference. It’s important that everyone must feel heard and included. Such broad inclusion is crucial to securing people’s support in cultivating the selected values in any organisation.

THE FINAL STEP Edit the top ranking value statements submitted by the selected candidates to generate a final set of organisational values. As substantive judgements are often required here, leaders must step in and hand-pick the final set of values.