Corporations don't have Values, People do!

As part of a culture change process with a company I'm working with, I've asked the participants to design a new induction procedure. Part of the induction will be an attempt to explain the corporate values and instead of presenting the usual values/mission statement here's the question I put to the group:

"How does working here allow me to express my personal values?"

The idea was to get individuals to relate some true stories about what they had done, what had happened and so give new employees (and perhaps old ones, too), some introduction to the culture of the place.

A couple of points I want to make:

Firstly,it was really hard for some people to stop with the corporate-speak; you know, the 'employees are our greatest asset, blah, blah, blah'. I'm not doubting that these people believe stuff like that (or that they should believe it), but I wonder if they actually felt it? I certainly didn't feel any connection between the head and the heart from the people who spoke that way, and using corporate-speak doesn't tell anyone how this company is any different from another company - only the unique stories of what has happened here can do that.

Secondly, I deliberately asked for personal values, not corporate values. I seriously doubt that corporations really have values and maybe it's time we stopped kidding ourselves that they do, and take personal responsibility for what we do in the name of the corporation. Sure, some committee may get together and formulate a nice sounding list but are those really the values of the whole corporation? Remember, the fact that a corporation has legal standing as a person is simply a fiction, something that's been enacted in law, but it doesn't make a company a flesh-and-blood, living, breathing and feeling person.

(BTW, I've just downloaded 'The Corporation' via Democracy. I haven't seen it yet.)

We could say that a company's values are evidenced by the actions of the company, but it is still individuals or groups of individuals who are really taking the actions. To say that the company is taking the action simply allows the individuals to legally, if not morally, shift responsibility, thanks again to that legal fiction.

That's why I think it makes a lot more sense to ask people how working at a company allows them to express their personal values. Now, if one person tells a story about that, then I can listen to him or her and judge whether I wholeheartedly support those values, or I can just live with them, or at the other extreme, find them unacceptable.

Of course, if I find them unacceptable something's got to give.

If lots of people share their stories, then we have a pretty good idea of the company's actual culture as expressed by actual behaviour. And we remember it.

Acronyms: What's in a Name?

Acronyms! Love them or hate them? You know what I mean - those words formed from the initial letters of other words. You can go to www.acronymfinder.com and look up over 3,000,000 million of them.

Governments are really good at making them up so that they are pronouncible but carry no meaning other than identification: e.g.

• NOFEAR (National Organisation for European American Rights)
• NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation),
• CSIRO, pronounced 'sigh-row' (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation),
• ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation),
• and apparently about 3,000,000 others.

Geez, I've even done it myself with BRFSStrategic - Big Red Flying Squirrel. You'd think I'd know better!

But consider when an acronym can become a useful metaphor full of meaning:-

NESST - National Executive Strategic Sustainability Team - the idea being that this top-level team was to be a nest to nurture various initiatives.

CAST - Change Agent Support Team - for a team responsible for implementing change, the acronym made it clear that the team members were the cast who were the main players in any effort, not just directing but actively participating.

NeWT - New World Training - for a training program designed to give participants awareness and tools to manage their own culture. Quite apt, because a newt is an animal capable of regenerating lost limbs.

What I found really fascinating was that the culture in each of these cases was 'robust' enough to tolerate some digs at these acronyms.

For example, one wag described NESST as a place for those who were feathering their own! CAST was quickly referred to in some quarters as CAST-AWAY. NeWT left some people wondering what parts needed regeneration.

These sort of meaningful acronyms tell a story of their own, and give people some way of judging when they are no longer apt acronyms but only anachronisms (sound pretty close don't they?), which could indicate it's time to change, give them up and do something else.

Do you have any favourite acronyms???

addendum 24/11/2006: there's a lovely post about acronmyms by John Maeda here.

Building the Pyramid, Running Round the Circle

Hugh Macleod, somewhere on his Gaping Void blog, has this neat cartoon depicting the company hierarchy. It's a pyramid, naturally enough, and at the base are 'losers', in the middle are 'clueless' and at the top are 'sociopaths'. Fair enough, even if it's not totally fair. Perhaps it's only 95% fair ;-). And while Hugh labels the bottom layer 'losers', it seems to me that in this particular pyramid, everyone is a loser.

Dave Pollard's post, Living on the Edge, presents a diagram of a series of concentric circles - the outermost circle which comprises 10% of the population are the innovators on the edge, and the innermost circle which comprises just 1% of the population are the political and business elite. I suppose that if you had a conical pyramid instead of the usual square and looked at it from a hot-air balloon :-) both Hugh's and Dave's drawings might look similar. Not that I equate Dave's edge-dwellers with Hugh's losers!

There's another connection, too. Both Hugh and Dave have described systems - very sick systems, full of wicked problems: and full of people, too, including some wicked ones no doubt.

Today a thought popped into my head - just what do most companies do that actually adds real meaning to people's lives? When I talk to business owners, and when I talk to employees, I'm often struck by the similarity of the conversations. The really serious conversations, which don't happen so often because they are so scary, all seem to lead to 'meaning' ... like, "What does all this activity really mean?" or "Well, now I've made it, it just doesn't seem to mean what I thought it would". And the same inquiries could be made not just by individuals but also by entire systems, however defined; a team, a company or even a country.

Somehow I know that it doesn't matter how much training you have or take, how many 'change management' initiatives you introduce, or how many workshops, focus groups, seminars or Open Spaces you invoke, nothing makes much lasting difference, nothing sticks, without 'meaning'. It's tricky because 'meaning' doesn't get decided - - - it sort of arises, and I have a hunch that it does so individually AND collectively almost simultaneously because we are relational beings. (If it doesn't arise, then it's basically imposed, which is the cause of the lament of so many business owners that their employees just don't seem to get it - of course they don't ... it literally means nothing to them.)

Practically, what does it mean, say, for a company? I'm of the view that most strategic activity is basically what could be called sense-making. The best analogy I've heard is that it's making sense of a game where no one has told you the rules or how many players there are and the rules and the players keep changing all the time! Which is also about wicked problems.

Sense-making is only a stepping stone to meaning. Lots of people tend to equate the two but I think there's a big difference. The best way I know how to explain the difference is through what my father told me about death: "We may comprehend death, but we will never understand it" - sense-making is aligned with comprehension, but meaning is about understanding.

What's more, there's no sense in your making sense all alone - you have to communicate it to others, both to be affected by them and their perspectives and to test the reality of your sense-making. In a company those others are what I call a 'strategic team'. Teams really are the greatest strategic asset you have in a company, but most so-called teams have quite a way to go before they perform in this way. It's more than a functional or operational arrangement, which is where most teams seem to be.

It's the situation where you realise that without the team and the other people on the team, your life would somehow have less meaning even if only because being part of the team brings out the best in you, work-wise and personally. Now that's a tough call for the company, for the team and for the individuals. It's also a choice that involves paying as much attention to the process of the team as to getting the job done.