‘Polysemous’ is a word you don’t come across every day. It means that a word or phrase can have several meanings. This is particularly true when it comes to organisational core values.
Research consistently highlights the importance, and multiple benefits, of individuals, teams and organisations embracing core values. For instance, from his extensive research of top-performing companies for his best-selling book Good to Great, Jim Collins concluded that core values are not only essential for a business making the leap from good to great, but they’re also required for enduring greatness.
The problem with abstract principles
A recent article in the Harvard Business Review features research by culture expert Professor Erin Meyer who says one of the biggest mistakes companies make when articulating their desired organisational culture, is to express values as ‘abstract absolute positives’, such as ‘integrity’, ‘respect’, ‘trust’ and the like.
Meyer says such words are unlikely to drive operational decision-making (or behaviour) of a workforce because in a practical sense, they might mean different things to different people.
For instance, a core value of ‘transparency’ might play out differently from one person to another and could create different expectations across an organisation about the level and type of information leaders and employees choose to share, internally and externally.
Stress-test your core values
Meyer says the trick to making organisational culture come alive is to dilemma-test values to determine if they are actionable enough for everyday decision-making. This entails identifying the tough dilemmas employees routinely face and clearly stating how they should be resolved. If there are several options to take in a dilemma, then the employee would know which option to choose because the expected behaviour would be clearly articulated in a specific value statement.
Meyer cites Amazon’s ‘Have a backbone: disagree and commit’; Pixar’s ‘Regularly share unfinished work’; and Netflix’s ‘Don’t seek to please your boss, seek to do what’s right for the company’, as value statements specific enough to guide consistent behaviour.
How actionable value statements can become your organisation’s trademark behaviours
In my work with culture-focused organisations, I, too, have found that core values expressed as one word or broad phrases are open to interpretation by employees. If an organisation has an existing abstract principle in place such as ‘service excellence’, ‘care’ or ‘integrity’, then I recommend they develop short, actionable sub-statements to provide more clarity and shared meaning.
Here’s some examples of how broad, one-word principles can be supported with ‘relatable’ actionable statements to facilitate a shared understanding about attitudinal and behavioural expectations:
- Customer excellence – go the extra yard to delight
- Care – be kind and show empathy
- Growth – learn and apply something new every day
- Teamwork – leave no-one behind
- Accountability – take responsibility and follow through
- Innovation – be curious, creative and open-minded
- Efficiency – do more with less
- Fun – go lightly and laugh out loud
Whether you’re running a small business or large organisation, turning your core values into actionable statements will ultimately become the yardsticks by which you can build a great brand reputation.
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©Ros Weadman 2024
