To begin with, in discussing the importance of values in organizations, it is worth noting up front that the very fact that today’s modern world is one that is constructed of organizations is worth celebrating – it is a dream come true. The history of the world up to modern times, as colorful and eventful as it is, is essentially one depicting the fortunes of a minute portion of the human population on earth, expressed through the state-centered enterprises they established to give greater scope to their personal ambitions.
The thousands of years of recorded history had little to say of the rest of us. Hobbes‘s famous description of the lives of pre-societal humans as being solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short could still largely represent history’s judgment about our sojourn across time, pretty much right up to little more than a few generations ago.
Until now. As Peter Drucker noted so insightfully, organizations are now the very building block of society. They are everywhere. They are – to varying degree, but in the end inevitably – ours. We express ourselves through them, and they express themselves in a way that facilitates our doing of that.
And this is a key reason, I think, why Wally Bock‘s emphasis is so important, that organizational goals are not complete – and are not effective – unless organizational values have been surfaced and integrated into them.
But the question is not merely what are the grand, and perhaps impossible, dreams of our organizations, but what are the sources of those dreams. That is key.
They cannot sustainably be merely the consultant-facilitated product of an off-site for senior management or, even, directors. I know that I have strenuously argued that goals must arise from owners, or directors as their representatives – not from managers per se. Goals that are not generated by owners or not adopted by them cannot possess organizational integrity. That represents a core value deficit.
But values, more generally, exist separately in organizationally meaningful ways from ownership alone. They are in the air all around us. They vary, and our understandings of them vary. We bring them into the organization in a wonderfully complex array of ways.
We bring our own personal values with us when we assemble together as individuals to collaborate on corporate goals. We thus influence the internal dynamics of the organization in ways not comprehended by wire diagrams or flow charts.
As we assemble in our communities, we establish value-laden customs and mores that make up strong currents in the sea in which our organizations swim. As consumers, inheritors of cultural legacies, religious upbringings, national myths, we form a stupendous mixture of value-sets that reinforce or abrade each other in ways that – well, that make the world go ’round.
In fact, our organizations themselves become a part of the very swirl of symbols and expressions of our values that we and they find ourselves contending with. As individuals, we often negotiate this mysterious terrain by instinctively integrating our goals with our values.
But our organizations can’t do that. So we have to address the problem directly. And to do that, we have to try to understand the myriad dreams of our staff, our communities, our societies, our customers and partners located around the world – or, increasingly, who have come from around the world.
Next we have to come to an understanding of what that means for us.
Then we have to take a stand about our place within this sea of value-laden influences, our relationship to them, and our own corporate identity with respect to them. It is a deep and ongoing process of analysis.
But in the course of it, we learn who we, organizationally, are. When we integrate that awareness into our goals, we are remembering who we are.
—
Today’s tip: Speaking of corporate psychoanalysis, please see this clever take on organizational pathology by Carmine Coyote at Slow Leadership.
—
More and more readers are viewing the new mobile-friendly version of the Managing Leadership Blog on their internet-capable phones and pocket computers, and you can, too! Just use the “Get Mobile Version” link at the upper right of this page to have the address sent to your device or, for those of you reading this in your email client or RSS reader, go to http://fdm8.com/managingleadership to view the site (you can visit it right here from your computer to get an idea of what it will look like on your portable device).
If you enjoy this way of accessing this site, you can sign up for text alerts (of new posts) to your phone simply by enrolling your number in the mobile subscription link, also at upper right on the sidebar of the main page. Why not try it now!
And if you prefer to continue viewing the site on your regular computer, then please do subscribe by email or RSS reader, so you’ll always get the latest posts!
—
Technorati Tags: value, organization, history, enterprise, ambition, Hobbes, society, goal, effective, consultant, management, director, owner, representative, manager, integrity, collaborate, corporate, dynamic, custom, mores, consumer, symbol, relationship, identity, analysis, psychoanalysis, pathology, Carmine Coyote, Slow Leadership, Peter Drucker, Wally Bock
Sphere: Related Content
