My mind has been whirring lately with a connection between values and this graphic work I’m doing, and how it falls into the greater sphere of business. From past self-development exercises I have developed a strong attraction towards discussing and building with the concept of personal values (and business values, which are a manifestation of the combined personal values of people in an organization). These are things like family, excellence, discovery, innovation, strength, faith… these are among my values.
When I was pregnant, my husband came home one day with the forms to fill out to enlist in the Army reserves. Aside from the timing being absolutely horrendous, I was quite taken aback at his strength of purpose. I knew that he was a military history buff but I thought his views on US foreign policy indicated that he didn’t believe in war. In my drive to understand him, I asked him to look at a list of personal values and pick out 8-10 values that he felt strongly drawn to. One of those was service, and we had a good discussion about his desire to serve his community and his country. We’d been married for five years and together for nine, but I gained a whole new understanding of him when we started discussing values in this way.
This family episode reinforced for me the theory that what we value most drives us to choose activities and life paths that serve those values. Our friends or colleagues may shake their heads in wonder, but whether we know it consciously or not, we are motivated and in some cases driven to do things in support of our values. It just happens to help relationships when each person knows what those values are!
Taking this from the personal arena into the business world, we have to contend with the economic definition of the word “value”. We hear about “value-added” services, “values-based” sustainable business practices, and investors talk about the “value” method of investing. It’s easy to forget that our individual and cultural values play a huge role in human behaviour within markets and organizations – until there is a massive financial impact.
It would be pretty easy to rant on about the current economic downturn, except I’ve decided to join a number of my colleagues in just not participating. I am not doing the recession. Thanks, but no thanks. I’d rather focus on something positive: a sea change that many people have commented about, perhaps personified by leaders like Barack Obama and heck, even Oprah Winfrey. We as a society (especially in North America) are starting to listen to our inner voices, starting to seek something more than just another flat-screen TV or flashy car. We’re seeking fulfillment of a more spiritual nature – self-actualization as Maslow would describe it.
So how does this massive demographic/cultural trend affect business? Well for one thing, the organizations for which we work or volunteer need to put their ears to the ground and listen. The number one goal can no longer be “shareholder value” because we are the shareholders… and we don’t just want money anymore. Businesses, government, NGOs – the people at the heads of these institutions, large or small, need to define, state and defend the values they stand for. Canada needs to increase its productivity in order to remain competitive on the global scene? We can’t do it just by driving our people to work more hours for less pay. Having core values (and stating them, and operating by them) is what is going to motivate each employee or volunteer to give the best of themselves to transform our workplaces into the enlightened, supportive, successful places that they need to be.
It starts with one person, usually somebody at the “top” of an organization, sitting down and asking herself “what do I stand for? and what do I want my organization to stand for?” Then the conversation needs to happen everywhere – in the boardroom, at the watercooler, over lunch at the nearby cafe. It needs to be a chorus of voices saying “YES! We stand for this! And we’ll work hard for it!” And from there, the change and transformation that needs to happen for our companies, our financial markets and our communities can start really taking place.
Sue, a very interesting commentary. I have to agree with all your points. Particularly definitions surrounding “values”. Thanks for this perspective again.
Sue, this is a great post.
One thing that comes to mind is that this entire notion of self-awareness is incredibly high. A lot of work, a lot of searching, have to go into one’s self in order to recognize, say, service as a value. I’m not sure it’s something that’s entirely innate – it’s a higher function of being human.
Hi Dave, thanks for visiting and commenting!
I think our world is ripe for this kind of searching of self – I think people all over the world in all kinds of places and economic positions are doing this kind of thinking, whether they consider it “recognizing their values” or just “being fed-up with their boss’ boss’ boss being a greedy sod”.
I like those words “a higher function of being human.”
[...] planning sessions I tend to focus first on a vision, and next on values. I’ve blogged on the importance of values previously, but I’ll reiterate here that having and articulating a set of values to guide the [...]