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Getting Started with Creating a Sustainable Values-Driven Organization


 A group of stylized cartoon people collaborating to build a tower of colorful geometric shapes.
6 minutes


By Esha Rana

When Melanie found her first job as an in-house content creator for an ed-tech start-up in 2019, she was ecstatic. The work was fresh and challenging, with plenty of opportunities to learn.

After a few months on the job, she inquired if a hybrid work arrangement would be possible due to long commute hours. She needed a combination of flexibility and structure to give her best. Upper management, however, denied her request. “Things are just not that way here,” her manager said.

Melanie was disappointed. “I understood what the problem was, and yet, I didn’t,” she says. “I wasn’t asking for my workload to be reduced for the same pay. I promised the same—in fact, better—results. Only the setup would be different for a few days a week.”

A lack of flexible working options led Melanie to quit her job and eventually find another one. “I realized that my definition and the organization’s definition of success and productivity were very different,” she says. “I valued flexible working conditions to achieve the best results. The company prized a traditional office structure. It would not have worked out long-term, so it made sense to find another job sooner rather than later.”

A changed workforce

Melanie’s story is one of thousands—a shift in perspectives and opportunities accelerated by the pandemic. The workforce has undergone a shift in values, and employees are increasingly looking for more than just a good fat salary package.

Research from LinkedIn (April 2023) revealed that 59% of professionals in Europe wouldn’t work for a company that doesn’t align with their values. For 55%, even a pay raise won’t convince them otherwise. Similar trends are visible elsewhere in the world. 

Richard Barrett, a British author, consultant, teacher and philosopher, is a long-time advocate for organizations to be values-driven. According to his research, values-driven organizations perform better on all fronts. They generate higher earnings, have higher levels of employee engagement and retention rates, and lower absenteeism. Employees can feel creative, productive and motivated because they trust that the organization cares about their best interests.

Values-driven organizations generate higher earnings, have higher levels of employee engagement and retention rates, and lower absenteeism. Employees can feel creative, productive and motivated because they trust that the organization cares about their best interests.

Why values?

What is it about values, though, that leads to success and satisfaction in the workplace? Why should organizations prioritize values alignment within their teams?

To understand the intersection of organizations and the holistic work around “values,” we spoke to Cheryl De Ciantis and Kenton Hyatt, who have decades-long experience in leadership development program design, facilitation, executive and life coaching, and trainer-training. They have served as senior faculty at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) and co-founded their organization, Kairios, in 2001 to provide values development and alignment training for individuals and organizations.

In their view, the values that an organization chooses help employees organize their priorities, guide decision-making, and create a shared identity and ethical foundation.

“When organizational values are agreed upon and well-defined, people have a set of guidelines for carrying out their day-to-day work as well as for conducting relationships with internal and external stakeholders,” they explain. “When they are well-defined at every level and in all parts of the organization, work goes on more smoothly and productively because people have a better sense of what it’s all for. They know how they and their fellow organization members fit into the larger picture.”

It is important to remember, however, that everyone defines values differently. When organizational values are discussed, we tend to assume that everyone has the same definitions as us. This could not be further from the truth. Cheryl and Kenton have seen this numerous times in their consultations with companies in industries such as digital tech, pharma, law, manufacturing, communications, logistics, civil engineering, business consulting, health and higher education.

“Even when people hold the same value—for example, honesty—some may opt to behaviouralize the value as facts-only bluntness and immediacy; others may prefer to deliver optimally-timed messages in an empathically persuasive manner,” they explain. “Both preferences have advantages and disadvantages depending on the situation at hand, and each has its place.”

In Cheryl and Kenton’s view, this is healthy. “It supports the real benefits of diversity, which is to contribute differing points of view to any issue,” they explain. “It also gives a group of people a more robust approach to solving day-to-day and longer-term challenges and fosters innovative ideas and solutions.”

An illustration of four people participating in a virtual meeting.

Getting started: the foundation of values work in an organization

According to Cheryl and Kenton, the most accessible and consistent way to build a values-based culture is through honest dialogue.

This dialogue needs to involve everyone, from the senior leadership to supervisors to managers and front-line employees. In and through this process, each member must eventually come to understand what it means to live a particular value behaviourally.

“In the process of carrying out a dialogue, finding out that someone defines a value differently than oneself can be both startling and empowering,” Cheryl and Kenton say, sharing a potential bump in the process. “This is often especially so for senior leadership, who can be blindsided when organizational values seem to fail in practice.”

It might take time for a team to find its footing with a values-driven dialogue, but once they do, the net positive result in both the short-term and long-term creates a unifying and positive atmosphere.

Surveys (2022-2023) conducted by Cheryl and Kenton have revealed that people who sincerely and transparently participated in values dialogues are more likely to feel comfortable exchanging information, asking for and offering help and resources, and managing difficult situations. This transparent discussion of what a value means helps to create bonds of mutual understanding and trust. It can also lead to:

  • Better performance due to fewer chances of misunderstanding
  • Better integration for new hires and a jump-start for new teams
  • Access to differing insights, problem definitions and solutions, and innovations
     

Here are a few questions to guide a meaningful dialogue on values:

  1. What have been our organization’s previously agreed-upon values?
  2. Looking at our day-to-day decisions and engagement, what values do we actually seem to be prioritizing?
  3. Are these values working for us?
  4. What instances show us where we may have gone off track and need to make course corrections, even perhaps to the point of prioritizing different values over time?
  5. What are our successes? What happens when we operate in accordance with our values?

Building a values-driven culture

Cultures are not built in a day or by a single person. “Individuals need to be able to communicate with peers constantly to compare views, give and receive feedback, and contribute possible strategies for communicating stories and maintaining values alignment,” Cheryl and Kenton advise.

At any given time, there are multiple values that employees need to be aware of: the organization’s core values, their own values, and the values that may need to be called upon according to the needs of a given situation. Additionally, employees need to see how their values meaningfully overlap with the agreed organizational values and what behaviours best propagate them. How does balancing all these aspects play out?

Cheryl and Kenton share: “We each need to hold up a mirror to ourselves and make the best judgments we can about how to prioritize an individual and organizational value and what steps to take.”

The road ahead

Values work is not a once-a-year seminar that can be organized so that the company can pat itself on the back. Circumstances keep changing, and it is everyone’s responsibility to help keep shared values alive and healthy.

Ongoing values dialogues can help to do this and, consequently, build a more robust values-based organizational culture. “The organization’s values should be used as a sort of flexible scorecard,” Cheryl and Kenton suggest. “Ask regularly: How are we doing? Are we living up to our values? What do we need? What will we do to sustain our values? It’s up to each member of the organization to call out when dialogue processes may be faltering or forgotten.”