Leanne Faulkner asked about experience of communicating corporate values.
I'd like to describe three recent experiences that show different
approaches to achieving this.
1. A Community Healthcare Trust with 3000 staff (district nursing, mental
health, etc). following a strategic review involving the top 100 managers
in examination of current weaknesses, future scenarios, purpose etc, a set
of core principles and values were defined with a short 1 line description
of each. These were then taken out to the field with various groups of the
professionals delivering the service to have them say how they interpreted
the values and what implications this had for the design and dedlivery of
their services. This was critical to making the values 'operational'
rather than laudable aims.
2. In a supplier to the construction industry where ethical standards were
previously non-existant, a new management team came i with a view to
changing the business and changing the rules of the game in sector. The
first challenges was to convince the 24 robber barons running the business
that they needed to adopt a new set of values. They spent an evening and
the following day defining the values.
The appraoch started with discussions over beer about what were the most
unethical practices they'd seen or practiced. After initial mirth, the
mood became quite mellow as people realised quite how depressing a picture
they were painting about themselves and their environment. The following
morning we started to explore the question 'if customers were to trust us,
what values would we have to display?'. Having defined the values they
then went on to define examples of practical behaviuors and actions that
would be consistent with / contrary to the values - the previous night's
conversation provided rich source material.
3. A division of a UK government ministry recently went through a highly
participative change programme to create a new strategic direction,
clarify service offerings, define the process architecture, roles and
skills and design the organisation structure. Having done the 'technical'
design, the focus then shifted to the values that needed to be displayed
and adhered to if the technical design was to deliver the goods. The
result was a set of values which staff defined and then translated into
Staff and Managers' Charters - setting out the behaviours each would
demonstrate to and expect from the other.
Managers were extremely reluctant for this to happen initially. However,
the process gradually resolved most concrns as the charters that emerged
proved to be well reasoned, balanced and realisitic. Interestingly, the
value over which most debate took place was that of honesty - with many
interpretations of what honesty meant for a government department!
My experience of values statements that are handed down from on high as
laudable goals simply remain as owrds on paper. People have to engage with
the values, translate them into behaviours and work thorugfh what that
means in a day to day work context.
I could provide more details on the case examples if your colleague
requires them.
Rohit Talwar
rtalwarcbt@aol.com
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>