Business Essentials. Part 1. Values

In interactions with companies, I often observe a lack of a clear, transparent tool capable of fully integrating values at all levels.

Corporate values are a fundamental component of the corporate culture and the subsequent motivation to achieve the company's objectives. It's commendable when they exist, but it's insufficient to adopt them once merely and proudly display them on a wall. It's crucial to assist all employees in deeply understanding them so they can embrace and operate based on these values.

How to Achieve This?

Values End-to-end Guide

Primarily, values should exist. Having them listed, company leaders would lean on these values, recognizing their profound significance. They can seamlessly incorporate them into their discourse during communications, both with company employees and clients.

Moreover, it's essential for employees to have a clear understanding of what each value truly embodies.

How exactly can we ground these values at the employee level? Jurgen Appelo's ideas particularly inspired me. So let me introduce steps to ensure employees genuinely live by corporate values and use them as a foundation in their daily tasks.

The exercise is divided into two parts:

• The first relates to the recognition of values if they have not been established in the company thus far
• The second concerns the understanding of these values

Recognizing Values

I recommend aligning with the 'Big values list' that Jurgen Appelo proposed in his book Management 3.0. This list provides a great starting point to save one from the "writer's block".

How to select the most pertinent values for a specific company? If the company is not big, it would be beneficial to involve all employees in this step (a bottom-up approach):

• Each employee formulates a list of values, drawing inspiration from the proposed list
• Subsequently, employees form groups — for instance, of three individuals — and select 7 principles for each trio
• Gradually, the groups enlarge, and each time 7 values are highlighted

This continues until a unified list, accepted by all employees, remains.

If the company's size is too big to involve every employee, this exercise can also be conducted by a team of leaders (a top-down approach).

Understanding Values

Encourage employees to articulate what, in their understanding, each value represents and how exactly it should be shared by other team members.

The gathered information is analyzed and amalgamated into a distinctive compendium of corporate rules. These rules specify the content of each value and its significance.

For instance, it may sound like this: 'The company places a heightened emphasis on the quality of its products. Quality requirements are embedded directly in the product design phase. Within the company, there are checks, systems of internal, external, and cross-quality control, etc.'

When Values exist in a company, the 'understanding exercise' may be done on the team or department level. Your team may be an example of consciousness and proactiveness and start the big changes on the corporate level.

Subsequently, managers monitor the adherence to the company's values during the work process. This allows the value to be 'threaded' through all stages and brought down to the level of each employee's daily work.

The manager becomes an exemplar of working based on values!

Professional Assistance in Forming Values

The business environment is currently extremely dynamic. In the conditions of a BANI world, I recommend conducting strategic sessions every six months. The new strategy adopted during the session may necessitate a review, modification, or addition of new values.

Values can be worked out either independently or with a consultant who provides services related to:

• organizing and conducting strategic sessions
• reviewing and adjusting the company's values

Me and my team assist in devising a detailed plan for a strategic session, which the company can then implement independently or accompany the company through the entire journey from inception to the final outcome.

Additionally, we help companies in measuring work outcomes and their alignment with the adopted values. It’s essential to understand how a specific value is applied, shared and relied upon by employees in their daily work.

We also provide support in tracking and analyzing processes that lead from business strategy to results through values and in identifying areas for potential improvement. Typically, this provides information on which specific processes require adjustments to achieve the desired KPIs. After all, achieving the selected indicators won't happen by chance; hence, it is essential to understand what exactly needs to be added to the work - activity, expertise, and the like.