Understanding your Companies’ Values

If you have been following this blog for any length of time or have attended a BNI Training Session you will be aware that Organisational Culture and Servant Leadership are two themes that come up on a regular basis in BNINZ. The culture of BNI is something that sets it apart from many other organisations – and the philosophy of Givers Gain is the cornerstone of the organisation.  It is no coincidence that the BNI NZ office is not called Head Office or HQ – but BNI Support as we firmly believe that our role is to assist the members, Directors etc and in effect we have taken the hierarchial pyramid that exists in many organisations and turned it upside down!  That said – the following article in this weeks NZ Herald was of particular intersest to me:

Understanding your company’s values and being true to them provides stability for your organisation and a basis for staff to feel a sense of connectedness with the organisation, which helps with staff attraction and retention.

So says Ruth Donde, regional manager, New Zealand, of Results Coaching Systems.

“Values and culture are linked. If the culture of your organisation is hierarchical – that is fine – but you need to attract people who thrive in that sort of environment and believe in status and titles – people who fit in with the company’s values.”

She says it doesn’t help to say your values are one thing when in practise they’re another – such as a hierarchical organisation saying that everyone counts in the same way.

She says you need to go through a process in realising your company values – not just put a group of words together and stick them on a wall.

“Understand what’s important to your organisation, what’s going on in it, and what do you want it to be like. This doesn’t take a couple of meetings – it can take months and involves deep discussions and plenty of honesty.
“It’s good to involve the whole company and not just have a top-down approach. In the end the key for buy-in is embedding those values.

“For example, if teamwork is a key value, don’t give out individual rewards. It doesn’t make sense if you’re trying to encourage teamwork to give a bottle of wine to the top achiever – reward the whole team that does the best. Also, make collaboration a part of your KPIs.”

Jasbindar Singh, coaching psychologist and executive coach of SQ Executive Management Consultancy, agrees.

She says: “Values are fundamental to the purpose and strategy of your company. You need to ask: Who are we? What are we trying to achieve and how do we best get there.

“Typically the senior leadership may do some work on what values they deem important for their business but invariably this needs to be rolled out and tested with the staff at all levels.

“They need to have some input into the kinds of attitude and behaviour the chosen values translate to.”

Singh says being clear on values is very important.

“For example two different companies may have innovation as a core value. For one the translated behaviour may be around taking risk while for another the focus maybe more about looking out for a different ways of doing things.”

Understanding your company’s values and being true to them provides stability for your organisation and a basis for staff to feel a sense of connectedness with the organisation, which helps with staff attraction and retention.