Values And Culture

By Hardin Byars, executive coach with HTG Peer Groups

Dear Coach: Our core values are posted all over the office, and we take the time to go over them with every new employee; but, I still see behavior inconsistent with our values. What can I do?

Most of the time people behave the way they are taught to behave. Let me give an example based on a humbling personal experience.

A few years ago I was leading a technology consulting firm and two of our core values were “People” and “Balance.”

My leadership team and I were preparing for an upcoming all-company meeting and discussing who would receive the various awards to be distributed at the event. The highest award we gave – and it was accompanied by a nice check – was to the consultant who had the most billable hours in the quarter.

Suddenly a troubling thought occurred to me: despite what we espoused as our core values, we were actually rewarding behaviors that were inconsistent with some of those values. We were a living example of the old saw: “you cultivate what you celebrate!” The unintended consequence of our well-intentioned award was that the topic of “burn out” was often overheard in discussions around the office.

True enough, core values are the underpinning of a corporate culture. But what is a corporate culture? Well, here is my working definition of corporate culture: the unseen hand that directs the decisions of employees when the boss is not there. Posted core values don’t necessarily equate to the values that undergird our real culture as my uncomfortable experience pointed out.

So, if you don’t like the behaviors you see, take an objective look at what your company “celebrates” before you go in search of any other reasons.