Added values?

It was World Values Day yesterday, so I've slightly missed the boat but hey, puppies aren't just for Christmas are they.

Whilst of course values are important and really good ones are really important, there is an awful lot of unhelpful fluff and faff surrounding them. For example, the theme of WVD this year was 'Values Bring Us Together', which is lovely, but they also rip us apart, as we're seeing all too clearly at the moment in many parts of the world.

As the WVD site puts it, values are what matter most to us, motivating and guiding us, and firing our passion to do the things we do. But that goes for the bad things we do as well as the good.

Values are not an unequivocally positive thing.

And whilst it's wonderful to highlight and promote those values that do bring us together or otherwise add value to the common good, we also need to bear in mind their shadow, and not get seduced into wishy washy, +ve psych, every-thing-is-awesome thinking, however compelling that may be right now.

For example, there was a lot in my LinkedIn feed yesterday about organisational values.

Organisations do not have values.

Organisations have structures, processes, boundaries, tasks, strategies, visions, teams, departments and so on. But they don't have values. They can't as they are not sentient, ethical, living things.

But they do have people in them, and those people have values.

The most an organisation can do is to represent values, and this is where it gets complicated because the values an organisation represents are selected, usually by leaders, and always with a view to how they want the world to feel about them. This is called 'branding'.

People do the same. We are very good at choosing how we wish to be seen by different audiences, and even at being different in different contexts. When we do that, it's called 'emotional intelligence'.

But organisations don't have emotions, so it's the leader's emotions - ambition, love, care, anxiety, jealousy, etc - that drive what values the organisation represents.

So that's one thing that's important to remember.

Another is the tendency to think that deciding on a set of values for the organisation to represent and then getting them up on the wall or printed in glossy 'values statements' is enough; to think that from then on, the organisation has those values.

The result is that leaders then feel like they don't have to attend to the complex process of changing mindsets, behaviours and attitudes in order to create a culture that supports the achievement of aims. Instead of living the values they represent, they just point to the words on the wall.

Of course, what this means is that the actual lived reality of the organisation - the values that actually drive behaviour - can go unchecked. And as we know, when this happens, things can go very badly wrong.

The values that Enron's leaders selected to represent were integrity, respect, communication and excellence. And yet these were a smokescreen for institutionalised, systematic and creatively planned accounting fraud and systemic corruption, including at the highest levels.

McKinsey's stated values - which stem from its nominal purpose 'to help create positive, enduring change in the world' - include 'high ethical standards', though it's now had to pay out more than $870m for helping to drive America's tragic opioid epidemic, including recent settlements of nearly $300m in addition to the US Attorneys General's initial fine of $573m.

Closer to home in the schools world, the Lilac Sky Academy Trust very loudly trumpeted its core values of courage, integrity and wisdom, yet was shut down by the DfE in 2016 for financial impropriety (including spending public money on champagne, senior staff being rehired the day after significant pay-offs and council grants paid straight to the bank account of its CEO's consultancy firm). Sadly, there are many more examples in the world of MATs.*

These were all values led organisations. It's just that the values which were actually leading organisational practice and culture were very different to the ones on the wall.

These are my principles, and if you don't like them, I have others

Groucho Marx

The final thing worth noting about values is the idea that organisational culture is about 'shared values'. It's not.

Firstly, it can't be. Each individual's personal values are unique, and the idea that everyone in a school or any other organisation might share the same one - let alone the same four or five on the wall behind the receptionist - is just silly.

Secondly, it shouldn't be. Can you imagine just how terrible a workplace would be if everyone in it had the same values. It's the diversity of thought, opinion, experience and desire that drives the richness of organisational life, let alone the creation of value and outcomes. It's what makes life worth living.

And thirdly, the concept of 'shared values' was made up anyway, plucked out of thin air by leaders at McKinsey (ironic, eh?) in the late 1970s as a 7th thing-beginning-with-S to include in their now famous 7S model of organisational change. The process they went through - as well as the meaninglessness of the phrase - is brilliantly explained here by Geoff Marlow.

Culture is about mindsets, behaviours and attitudes and, though it's the leader's emotions that drive what values the organisation represents, it’s the way people show up at work - the way they bring their personal values to life in their interactions with people around them - that drives culture.

So if you're not spending your time, energy and money as a leader motivating the people in your organisation who have the most influence - which probably includes you - to act in ways that align with best intentions, you're not just failing to add value; you’re taking it away.

*Pat Thomson's brilliantly researched book 'School Scandals: blowing the whistle on the corruption of our education system' lists many more examples.