3 great reasons why values must come off-the-wall and into the hearts of our people
This article states how two of the most common questions relating to people being asked in boardrooms right now are ‘What values will serve us best in the new economy?’ and ‘How do we get our people living and breathing these values in their day-to-day working lives?’
Adopting or designing core values is key to establishing the culture of an organisation. Translating these ‘values’ into the demonstrative, measurable behaviours across the workforce in the day-to-day working operations is where the true cultural change challenge begins. The article goes on to state the following 3 ways:
1. People need the map of the territory
Values should reflect the way your business currently operates, as well as providing the map to the future mission; only in many cases they fail to achieve either. Why this is so and why are many organisations unable to get into the hearts and minds of their people and engage them is the cause of much frustration for leaders.
The cause lies in the quality of the communication and the leader’s energy and ability to interpret a set of simple words or phrases into inspirational beliefs and meaningful behaviours.
2. It’s not what you give to your people, it’s what you put in them that creates change
Embedding values incrementally to create a great culture reaps the best rewards. It is not enough to get everyone excited and fired up, then leave posters around the walls as a reminder in the belief engagement is an automated given when we know the facts and the directions. If this were the case, the entire world would be slim, fit, healthy and happy!
Like anything, we need to embed and embrace something to own it, and let’s follow the premise that if we don’t use it, we lose it. So incremental, continuous development is critical.
3. Behaviour change means re-wiring our people’s minds
Tesco’s for example, knows that we know they are there, understand what they sell and what they stand for, i.e. Every Little Helps. Nevertheless they continually advertise and inspire us every day to ensure their brand never leave our minds when we are ready for our next household shopping trip.
The world of advertising has understood how to hard-wire habits and behaviours into our minds for many decades. What is shocking is that we all know this, yet organisations don’t take a leaf out of their book and understand that embedding values and changing individual and group behaviour is the same deal.
The organisation is selling the brand and the ‘values’ that are linked to that brand. With this, they are inspiring behaviour in customers and in employees. We cannot get customer engagement without first getting our employees engaged and our core values lie at the foundation for that communication and engagement process.
