Value statements beyond clichés

I was working with a team on working out their values the other day. Actually, we didn’t get to it – we had a much more productive conversation about something else, and we only had 7 minutes to work on the values. Sometimes that kind of pressure produces unexpected results – we produced a great set of values that inspired and ignited everyone around the table in 6 minutes 30 seconds.Of course we didn’t. But what the time pressure did was force me to be very succinct about the process of constructing a set of values.I’ve done this more than a few times, and I’ve found that the best way to work out your values is to think about your vision, where you’re trying to go. Then think about the behaviours that will be necessary to achieve the vision.There are two kinds to think about: first is the hygiene behaviours, the ones that are non-negotiable fundamentals about how you operate. The second is the aspirational behaviours, the way you’re going to need to behave if you’re to achieve the vision.For example, if you want to be world class in your industry, you’re going to need to innovate. Most values exercise stop at that, put “innovation” on the wall just after “integrity”, job well done. But not terribly useful on its own. It’s just a nice word, and values statement tend to be full of nice words. Like integrity. Was there ever a values statement that didn’t have integrity in it?That’s why you have to unpack the behaviours that sit behind the values. For instance, if we’re going to be world class we’ll have to innovate, and innovation requires trying things, some of which won’t work. The behaviours that sit under innovation might include “we try things that might not work” or “we accept failure as learning”.You know you’re getting there when you get to a behaviour that looks like real life, but it also might not get honoured: there might be times when failure is greeted with blame and shame. It’s then that values can actually become more than truisms on a poster. But only as long as someone is prepared to hold the organisation to account: “hey, you said you would treat failure as learning – do you mean it or not?”. Most people are rightly sceptical of values statements. They’re waiting to see whether you’ll stick by the values when push comes to shove. If you’re not prepared to stick to them yourself, don’t go down the values path because you’ll only harm your credibility. And if you’re not prepared to pitch your values statements as a higher standard of accountability, then you need to be prepared for them to be regarded as clichés, greeted with the usual amount of eye rollage.To learn more about values, check out Dr Mike's High Performance Culture course. Here's the introduction. Start the course on the Breakthrough Academy. Get 2 weeks free. Join now.