Working with Values
A wide-ranging conversation on values in the organisational setting
“Values are like the aspirational principles by which you would hope to live your life. You really can value kindness and not be kind. But you cannot have the character strength of kindness, the virtue of kindness, without actually doing kind acts.” — Professor Angel Duckworth. 1
I recently had a wide-ranging conversation with Stephen Berkeley 2 on the topic Working With Values — the 47-minute video is linked below.
We explored various aspects of working with values in organisations, including:
What are values — and why their definition is less important than bringing them into our actions and interactions as virtues.
How I personally became interested in values through a particularly powerful experience in a values workshop in India back in 1995. 3
How most organisations publish a list of its five or so allegedly shared values but then fail to act in ways consistent with what these values espouse.
Why having a list of shared values in an organisation creates the dangerous illusion of having “sorted out the culture”.
That organisations focusing on values are actually trying to influence behaviours.
How culture is experienced in an embodied way, not as an espoused set of values.
Culture —“the way we do things round here” — incorporates the embodied sense of “we” and “round here”, both of which are complex, fluid and multi-dimensional.
People feel more happy, fulfilled, and contented when able to bring their own unique authentic values to life in their organisational actions and interactions.
The importance of creating organisational conditions within which people can discover and bring these authentic selves more and more alive in their work.
The value of Self Determination Theory and its focus on Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness. 4
The big problem with the toxic myth of organisational shared values. 5
Why it’s practically impossible to hire only people who share the same values. 6
Why the “shared values” construct is a misguided attempt to achieve the goal of organisational coherence.
How after 40 years the notion of “shared values” has become so axiomatic that it's almost a heresy to suggest that it’s really missing the point.
Why talking about values is an ineffective approach to changing an organisation’s culture. 7
The seven channels that actually influence people’s mindsets about “the way we do things round here”. 8
The unhelpful habit of focusing on “leaders” as opposed to “leadership”. 9
The problem of thinking of senior executives as “decision makers”. 10
The vital role of senior executives as creating the conditions for emergence of a future-fit entrepreneurial culture of innovation, agility, and adaptiveness. 11
Why senior executives understandably find it hard to break free from these outdated legacy habits of thought and action.
How mainstream finders, minders, grinders consulting firms suppress ideas and insights that would unleash the potential of people in organisations. 12
Redux: the seven channels that influence mindsets, attitudes, and behaviours and ultimately create, sustain, and change an organisation’s culture.
The problem of misaligned messages in the seven channels.
Unwritten rules — “the advice you’d give a close friend on how to survive and thrive in the organisation”. 13
Why organisations shouldn’t just focus on helping people flourish but also on how to collectively create value in the world. 14
How to improve sense making by cultivating 2D3D mindsets. 15
Moving beyond value-destroying debate and discussion to cultivate value-generating dialogue instead.
The importance of role modelling and expectancy as character traits in change agents. 16
Seeing others as competent and well-intentioned despite evidence to the contrary.
The surprising discovery that culture change can happen literally overnight. 17
What keeps me inspired and engaged in helping people create future-fit entrepreneurial cultures of innovation, agility, and adaptiveness.
Here’s the video of our conversation (47 minutes):
Angel Duckworth, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Grit in conversation with Dr Michael Gervais on the Finding Mastery podcast 28 February 2022, at 01:00 - direct link here.
I described this workshop in a previous article The Real Value of Values
I explored Self Determination Theory in this previous article on Humane Resourcefulness.
I explored the origins and consequences of this in The Toxic Myth of Culture as Shared Values.
In 2012 the University of Zurich (UZH) published research identifying nineteen core human values they found consistently represented across cultures. Given that most organisations list around five core values, the probability of two individuals sharing the same five out of nineteen is 1 in 11,628. That’s a lot of interviews…
This previous article describes the seven channels through which people pick up the clues, cues, signs, and signals from which they infer “the way we do things round here”. Talking about values has a small impact on just one of these seven channels — Persuasive Communication.
Ibid — The seven channels of culture.
See this previous article Leadership, not Leaders.
See this previous article Senior executives must give up their decision rights
See this previous article Creating Conditions for Emergence.
See this previous article Veni, Vidi, Invoici.
One of many insights and inspirations from my former colleague Dr Peter Scott-Morgan who sadly passed away in June 2022 from Motor Neurone Disease.
See this previous article on Cultivating combined wisdom.
See this previous article on Unlocking the innovative mindset.
See this previous article on The power of expectancy.
For more detail see this previous article Focus on key influencers.