What is a Values Based Corporate Culture?

A Values Based Corporate Culture is a work environment in which commonly shared beliefs or feelings guide, shape, influence, and determine people's attitudes, decisions, and behaviors.

What is a Value?

A Value is . . .

• A belief or feeling that a certain state of existence or being is preferred to another.
  
  
• A state of being that is treasured and held in high regard.
  
  
• A belief or feeling that certain behavior or conduct is preferable to other behavior or conduct.
  
  
• A belief or feeling that something is truly important.
  
  
• A principle that ought to be upheld and followed.

What are the benefits of a Values Based Corporate Culture?

The benefits of a Values Based Corporate Culture include the following:

• Increased profitability for your company.
  
  
• Customers who are highly satisfied and remain loyal to you.
  
  
• A work force that is ready, willing, able, and eager to take on challenges and work together to achieve a common goal.
  
  
• Employees who possess forthright ethics and who voluntarily do the right thing.
  
  
• Employees who hold themselves mutually accountable.
  
  
• Employees who work at a greater productivity level than ever before.
  
  
• Reduced risk of internal fraud, scandal, corruption, and litigation.
  
  
• Enhanced public perception of your products, services, and organization.

Four Steps To Building Values Based Corporate Culture

There are four major steps to building a Values Based Corporate Culture:

1. Identify and define in specific ways the corporate culture you desire.
   
   
2. Assess your current corporate culture.
   
   
3. Develop, plan, and implement a process and strategy to close the gap between the cultures you now have and that which you desire.
   
   
4. Understand and do your part.

Identify and Define in Specific Ways the Corporate Culture You Desire

To do this you need to:

• Identify and define your organization's mission and purpose.
  
  
• Identify and define the values that ought to guide all attitudes, decisions and behavior in your organization.
  
  
• Identify the specific attitudes and behaviors that you want your employees to incorporate and demonstrate in their relationships with each other, shareholders, directors, customers, clients, vendors, and third parties.
  
  
• Identify how you want your employees to feel about working for your organization.
  
  
• Define what you consider to be the ideal or preferred organizational work environment.

Assess Your Current Corporate Culture

Determine the current corporate culture by seeking feedback, perceptions, and observations from multiple sources such as your board of directors, senior management, middle management, employees, customers, and suppliers.

This requires that you ask questions about what is really like to work at or do business with your organization. These questions must get to the core of your organizational existence and being. Asking tough, but rightly framed questions will allow you to discover your current organizational culture.

Focused Strategies, Inc. has developed and uses an inquiry matrix comprised of 100 individual questions focused on the following 15 areas of analysis as a way of helping people assess their corporate culture:

1. Mission Clarity
2. Strategic Focus
3. Strengths/Weaknesses
4. Employee Pride
5. Employee Performance
6. Quality Improvement
7. CEO Leadership
8. Senior Management Leadership
9. Empowerment
10. Collaboration
11. Innovation/Creativity
12. Conflict
13. Ethics
14. Performance Barriers
15. Rewards\Recognition

The following techniques can also be used to get the feedback you need:

• Personal Interviews
• Informal Conversations
• Written Surveys
• Focus groups
• Open Corporate Meetings

Plan and Implement

Develop, plan, and implement a process and strategy that will close the gap between the culture you now have and that which you desire. The goal is to promote, inspire, and encourage the attitudes, behaviors, and values you want to characterize your organization.

It is important that you design a process that assures senior management, middle management, and employee involvement and buy in.

Many Value Based Corporate Culture initiatives include the following elements:

• An oversight committee personally appointed by the CEO that is charged with the responsibility for developing, planning, and implementing the initiative.
  
  
• The appointment of a senior level executive who facilitates, coordinates, and is administratively responsible and held accountable for the initiative.
  
  
• A personal statement by the CEO pertaining to his/her desires, aspirations, corporate mission, corporate philosophy, operating principles, business standards, ethical expectations, and corporate values. Often this highly personalized message is embodied in a video, booklet, web site, or other effective mode of communication.
  
  
• The development and adoption of a formal code of business conduct and responsible business practices.
  
  
• The development of a formal education and training program focused on the corporate values, operating principles, business standards, corporate philosophy, and ethical expectations.
  
  
• The customization of the education and training program in order to address the special and unique needs of the Board of Directors, Senior Management Team, Middle Managers, and Line Employees.
  
  
• The identification and adoption of specific quantifiable objectives for the initiative.
  
  
• An evaluation component.
  
  
• The development of a formal reward and recognition program specifically tied to the individual incorporation and demonstration of the corporate values.

Understand and Do Your Part

The most important factor in building a Values Based Corporate Culture is your personal commitment and authenticity. If you want the benefits that a Values Based Corporate Culture can bring, you must commit time, money, and personnel to the effort. You must make the initiative a corporate priority.

You have three specific responsibilities:

1. You must keep your people focused on the corporate mission.
   
   
2. You must steadfastly guard the corporate values. The corporate values will not have meaning until each is fire tested and you are challenged to make decisions that are consistent with them. This will require courage, fortitude, and psychological hardiness in difficult critical times.
   
   
3. You must align your behavior with the values. Walk your talk. Be consistent. You must lead by example.

Summary

Research by the authors of "Built to Last" and "Good to Great" have discovered that organizations who have strong corporate culture out perform, over long periods of time, those that lack a well defined, desired organizational climate. Do yourself a favor, invest in your organization's future by building a values based corporate culture.

 

www.focusedstrategies.org

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