Over-Valued
Huh. I was sorting through an electronic pile of refuse when I came across this little gem I wrote. Not sure how long ago.
Core values: corporations who think they’re important love them. Little do they know that in most cases they’re actually the kiss of death.
Think about it. When corporate leaders formulate a list of the company’s core values, they rarely think about how their employees actually behave; usually they’re thinking of how they *wish* their staff behaved. Even the guys and girls in the corner offices who are aware that there’s a difference between the two shrug it off, thinking it should inspire their workers and give them a lofty target to aspire to.
But when you are a worker bee and every day you see people violating the “core values”, then you come to have a lot of disdain and even contempt for that list and the people who dreamed it up it on their two-week Caribbean offsite. That attitude rapidly spreads throughout a company, and very effectively de-motivates even the most bushy-tailed college recruit.
What’s the alternative? How about taking a good, honest look at your company culture before etching those lofty values in brass? Make your values descriptive, not proscriptive. Maybe you’ll wind up with a core value of “We try to help our clients, even though they frustrate the hell out of us sometimes”. It’s not exactly a call to excellence, but at least it’s accurate, and that’s a lot less harmful than when a veteran shows the plaque to an eager and gullible new hire and says, “Yeah, we really don’t do that shit. Some manager just made those up.” I remember finding one such brass plaque at my first job, discarded on the floor in a storage closet.
In consulting, probably the single most important thing you learn is to manage people’s expectations. You always strive to under-promise and over-deliver, because doing more than someone expects makes you look like a hero, and doing less than someone expects causes doubt, mistrust, and contempt.
What surprises me is that senior managers never apply that expectation management lesson to corporate core values. Most companies set lofty, unattainable values that they never live up to, ensuring that any employee who believes in the core values winds up disappointed, crushing any enthusiasm they might have had. While the “leadership team” sits in the boardroom and wonders why they have morale issues despite the awesome core values the company stands for.
So if your company starts talking about core values, take a very careful look at whether they’re descriptive or wholly proscriptive, because the latter are guaranteed to cause trouble.