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3: Craft Your Values Blueprint

A "values blueprint" has been mentioned as a one-page summary of the values to which a company aspires. Such a document can be useful, but only to the degree it is used, and the degree to which it is used will depend heavily upon how it was created.

Culture consists on agreed-upon values that will drive actions and decisions. That they are agreed upon, rather than imposed, is critical: people perceive when something is being imposed upon them without their consent, and do not feel compelled to acquiesce to one-sided terms. Conversely, if people voluntarily agree upon something, they generally accept it and do not need to be forced to comply.

An analogy is drawn to corporate annual reports, and the puffery and boilerplate language they use to give investors a vague sense of the firm's well-being without much in the way of specific detail, and without making a specific promise that anything at all will be achieved. Investors generally aren't impressed and get the distinct sense that the firm is hiding something behind a wall of vague language. Employees take the same perspective on internal statements.

Jet Blue's values blueprint is shown as an example. It lists five values: safety, caring, integrity, fun, and passion. For each value, a handful of bullet points are provided. For example, "caring" is described as maintaining respectful relationships with employees and customers, striving to be a role model in the community, embracing a healthy balance between work and family, and taking responsibility for personal and company growth. The language is general enough that it communicates a principle that can be widely applied, but specific enough that it implies what the principle means.

Calling it a "blueprint" is also intended to connote certain things, chiefly that it is carefully planned and documented: it is not possible to put up a building based on a mental image - and especially when many hands are involved, it's unlikely each has the same image as the others. It has to be written down as a point of reference - people may do simple things based on their memory of it, but from time to time they must have a plan to reference to ensure they are doing the right things.

A blueprint is also a carefully planned document that requires quite a lot of effort to create, and is worth the effort it requires. A careless plan will lead to inconsistent results, if any at all. Firms that regard values as unimportant will not invest sufficient effort in considering their values and crafting their plan, and will derive little benefit from the exercise. (EN: In a sense, this becomes a vicious cycle - if little interest leads to poor planning, poor planning gets poor results, poor results reinforce the perspective that it is unimportant, hence repeat.) Said another way, if managing the culture is seen as a distraction from the "real" work, then it won't receive the attention it needs.

It's also noted that a statement of values is aspirational. At first, it describes what a firm wishes to become rather than what it presently is, and it doesn't become an accurate statement until the culture of the firm has made it so. And even then, there's a constant effort necessary to remain so.

The Values Team and Values Workout

There's a brief mention that the values team should be assembled from all areas of the company, with strong representation from the front lines - and if they are chosen well and given good direction, they should be able to draft the values blueprint in a very short amount of time. The author speaks of a "values workout," in which the team removes itself from daily affairs and focuses on the task, and asserts (with anecdotal evidence) that the task can be completed in just a couple of days.

A six-step process for crafting the values blueprint is provided:

Step 1: Begin the Conversation

The conversation begins with an assessment of the firm's existing values - both the professed and practiced ones. Key questions to ask are:

It is important to tie values to real behaviors - the decisions made, motivation provided, and actions taken. It's simple, and quite meaningless, to talk about the importance of "honesty" on a conceptual level and describe the kinds of things one should do, but unless there is evidence that it is practiced in every communication (internal and external), it is not a practiced value, merely a professed one.

The discussion of values can be held among employees, but ultimately it needs to involve senior leadership, who will be the vanguard for cultural change: if they are not willing to accept and adopt the values and do not agree to live by them, then the values are meaningless: they will not be practiced, and will only serve to breed cynicism.

Step 2: Select a Values Workout Team

After senior leaders think about their values, they should select a "Values Workout Team" that will be tasked with developing the blueprint that the firm will use to improve its culture. Some specific tasks for the team:

The team should not be fewer than five, nor more than thirty, regardless of the size of the firm. Even thirty seems difficult to manage - fewer is better, but you will need enough to fully represent the workforce.

Members of this team will be involved in a retreat to discuss values, which will last only a few days, but will also be tasked with advisory and implementation duties for a year or two afterward - it's a big commitment and you need people who are motivated to take on the task.

Include people rom every level of the organization: senior management to entry level. The front-line people who have routine contact with customers are key players. Be sure to include people with good communication skills who can help craft clear and compelling language. (EN: The author seems to overlook a critical component - customers. I suspect a completely internal group will overlook much.)

Of importance: while there are differences in power among the individuals on the team, they should have the understanding that they must work as equals in the context of the committee - a mail clerk's input is just as valid as that of the CFO. Without this understanding, the committee will merely be nodding along with the most senior person in the room, and this will sabotage the possibility of success.

Another valuable criterion is that the people selected are respected by their peers, which can be difficult to assess. Managers tend stack the deck with sycophants, who are not useful and lack credibility. In addition to lending their reputation to the project, respected individuals often have a better sense of what is really going on within a firm, and will speak with a broader perspective than their own personal agenda.

Step 3: Perform the Values Workout

The values workout is a two-day session in which the team will define up to seven core values that are vital to the organization, then decide which behaviors give the most meaning to those values.

Ideally, it should be held offsite, and involve people from various locations, including those that are overseas. The team should be isolated and focused, leaving the concerns of their daily duties behind for the duration. There should be no exceptions and no excuses - "dire emergencies" are generally not that dire, and can be handled by someone else while these people are away.

For the first day, the team will validate and expand upon the preliminary work done by top management in the first step, referring to the various assessment results, survey data, and interview notes. A few questions are suggested as discussion starters:

A general discussion should be held, even though it may be chaotic and vociferous, before breaking the team into smaller groups to discuss and winnow down the list. Eventually, you will bring the team back together to concur on five to seven core values and their working definitions.

The next step, which the author suggests as an "overnight thinking exercise," is to consider the behaviors that exemplify the new values. In this way, organizational values are similar to personal values (EN: I'd go so far as to suggest that, in this way, they become personal values) in that they are considered in decisions, drive behavior, dictate how people treat one another, and even result in a sense of guilt when a person fails to live up to their own standards.

For example, the value of integrity requires a person to demonstrate honesty, refuse to compromise values to achieve short-term results, take accountability for actions, and keep promises and commitments. This applies to professional life as well as it does to personal life.

And so, ask each person to consider what behaviors in their department could demonstrate that value. To be useful to an organization, a value must be observable and assessable, it should pertain to actions, you should be able to hire and train for it, and you should be able to reward it.

An example from a client: Achievement was translated into taking on challenging tasks, pursuing a standard of excellence, taking moderate risks, focusing on results, and knowing the business. The behaviors described her can be practiced by any employee in any role.

Step 4: Publish the First Draft of Your Values

Defining the values and assigning behaviors creates the first draft of the values blueprint. This draft should be circulated and feedback solicited. IF the values team has done a careful and thorough job, the draft will express many of the values employees already care about, which means it should be accepted without much resistance, which would be expressed in the form of objections or suggestions.

(EN: The author seems very optimistic - and given her experience, perhaps it is reasonable to be so - but given the worst-case scenario of being deluged with resistance, my sense is the better approach would be to go back to the drawing board rather than try to muscle forward with a few superficial changes.)

It's important to vet the draft with as many people as possible - and especially to keep it open to all rather than quietly circulated among top management - because you will ultimately need everyone's acceptance. If a values statement is pushed on an unwilling audience, it may get disingenuous support or draw fire from cynics, but it will not be adopted and practiced.

The author suggests vetting the draft with at least 5% of all employees. The author mentions one client who decided to vet it through employees before letting management weigh in, rather than the other way around. It's a good way to be sure people truly accept it, and are not just going along with what they believe management to want.

Step 5: Publish and Socialize Your Values Blueprint

Based on feedback gathered in the previous step, the team should be able to finalize the draft and publish a concise statement of values and their associated behaviors.

(EN: The author doesn't mention any introductory material, and looking at example statements of corporate values, it seems to be hit and miss. Some simply publish the list, but others have a paragraph introduction that tells why the list is important - in terms of what the company hopes to achieve by acting in accordance with its values. My sense is this is a better approach, as people will be more attentive and receptive if they know the reason. A stark list assumes the reader understands and accepts that there is a reason, even if it's not clear what that reason might be.)

There is some variance in the delivery method. The simples approach is a single sheet of paper, containing the values statement. In other companies, they have produced full-color brochures that go on for forty or more pages, which contain a lot of background information and interpretations. Some produce videos or multimedia presentations. No comment on whether all the filigree is necessary.

The important thing is that the values blueprint is something that is delivered to employees (not kept in a drawer) in language they can comprehend (both in terms of simplicity and, for international firms, in the actual language people speak), and to which they can relate (it is not a lofty corporate goal but something they have a stake in).

A small company can likely implement a values change in all departments at once, whereas larger organizations may need a phased approach. Start with a few departments in which the values will have the greatest impact, then roll it out to others. But be sure to have a comprehensive plan to roll it out to all departments - and it should be fairly rapid to mitigate conflict between the departments that have adopted the values and those that have not yet done so.

One example from a client was doing a road-show in which three senior leaders made presentations to small groups of employees. It's not clear if it's the same three, but the tally is 72 presentations to groups of 100 employees at a time. While this approach was slower, it allowed for greater interactivity with smaller audiences, which the client felt to be successful in generating enthusiasm and receiving direct feedback.

It is important for these presentations to be non-threatening and impactful, but at the same time to have leadership involvement so that it becomes clear that it is an initiative that the organization is serious about. It is particularly important for lower-level leaders to get the distinct sense that senior leaders will back them as they challenge their people to adopt the values, and doubly so if the new values seem to contradict the status quo.

Step 6: Create a Company-Wide Implementation Plan and Timeline

A single speech dos not change a culture. To weave values into the organizations' DNA, the values statement has to become a constant - something that is not merely spoken about, but actually done.

To permeate an organization, values must be coached and practiced, constantly and consistently, in the day-to-day activities of every employee. Each department head and supervisor needs to be involved in this process, of translating the corporate values to the work of their unit and coaching their employees to understand, adopt, and act upon them.

This may also mean devising new metrics and scoreboards, new hiring methods, new methods of evaluating and rewarding performance, new procedures for interacting, new methods of coaching, and the like. Though "new" may be an exaggeration in instances where the existing values are being reaffirmed or the new values require fairly minor modifications.

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