A great social observer once said, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The same sentiment could be applied to the organization.
Recessions and other times of crisis (like global conflicts) have a way of separating happy organizations from those that just talk a good game when the going is easy. In some organizations, when times are tough, morale becomes low and uncertainty becomes high. The people in such organizations feel “stressed out”, demotivated and lost. In other organizations, employees hunker down, ride out the storm and build the means for future success. What is the root cause of that difference? It all comes down to values – the organization’s and the individual’s – and how well those values align or clash. Every happy organization is aligned in much the same way; each unhappy organization finds itself in its own unique mess.
An economic philosopher of the 19th Century noted that a company’s success is based on its acquisition and maintenance of “capital”. If this were ever truly so, it is no longer a complete picture today. We have come to recognize in recent years that a company’s greatest asset is its people. Product alone is no longer the means of creating sustainable market difference. The only real competitive advantage comes about through your people, specifically how they behave with one another, as well as with your customers, suppliers and community.
People (and organizations) are defined by how they consistently act in a variety of circumstances. The driving force behind our behaviors are our values. The reason why values matters is because we are emotional beings. We all seek approval and reinforcement for the things we do. Within organizations, employees win favor from their managers by literally looking to them for signals that define correct behavior. When the employee’s values and the organization’s values are aligned, the employee’s behaviors will feel comfortable to the employee and will be recognized, reinforced and rewarded by the manager.
That’s when employees produce their most outstanding results. But what happens when values are not aligned? When an employee knows there is conflict between their own behaviors (or what feels comfortable) and the behaviors demonstrated or reinforced by their direct manager, the employee feels stressed out. Stressed out people (as working capital) lead to unhappy customers, unhealthy employees (high rates of sick and stress leave), and tension in the workplace (low customer satisfaction, poor quality of work).
Values are articulated by all organizations in the day-to-day treatment of employees, and in the way the leadership of the organization behaves towards its employees, suppliers, customers and shareholders. The lynchpin is leadership. Happy organizations are those in which leaders provide clear and consistent articulation of values and live them day-to-day, in GOOD TIMES and BAD TIMES.
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” What makes it safe for a child to be a member of a family is the consistency and “predictability” of its values, in good times and bad. A child looks to a parent, older sibling or grandparent for signals and direction, in the same way an employee looks to a direct manager or a distant senior executive. As employees, we are drawn to and crave that consistency from our leaders. The issue then is not what the leaders say on the web site or in the public speeches or on the back of the business card, but in the alignment of the actual behaviors of the senior leaders, the middle managers, supervisors and front-line employees. When they are aligned, great things happen – ordinary people do extraordinary things. When they are not aligned, employees look to their immediate manager for direction on how to act in a variety of circumstances, uncertain of which master to please, unable to commit with conviction to doing the right thing.
When organizations embrace a clear and consistent set of values at all levels they generate tremendous energy. It doesn’t matter how arduous circumstances may make the pursuit of a compelling vision. As long as values are aligned throughout the organization and consistently followed, employees will feel the safety and support to be motivated, the commitment required to act with a sense of ownership and responsibility and the freedom to innovate and improve processes.
Happy organizations use the following formula to achieve their greatness:
Values (What an organization holds to be true)
x
Vision (What an organization strives to become)
x
Leadership (How managers hold themselves and their direct reports accountable)
x
Execution (How employees do their jobs within that discipline)
=
Greatness (Measured by integrity, business results, and employee brand)
When this formula comes together, the resulting positive energy creates an organization that employees want to belong to and are motivated to help succeed.
On the other hand, there are those organizations that talk “sincerely” about their values, without living those values when the chips are down. The good thing about a crisis is that it provides values with the ultimate test. A value is not a value until is has met such a test – it is still just a belief. Beliefs bend and change when pressure gets exerted. Values don’t. Does your organization really value integrity or development or community service? Well, let’s see what happens when its profitability or market segment or share price gets threatened. If those values bend or break they weren’t real values all along; they were just beliefs, a set of nice-to-have statements, which suited the organization some times and didn’t suit it at others.
When leaders say one thing and do another, employees are not fooled. They may act as though they are okay with values that bend and sway with the wind, but really they’re just protecting themselves, seeking cover from a leader’s unpredictable guidelines. The result is “earned cynicism”, a topic which will be the subject of next week’s column.
David Cohen is president of Strategic Action Group, and author of “Inside the Box: Leading with Corporate Values to Drive Sustained Business Success”.
