The Minder

If you’re part of even the most average organization, you probably know a fair amount about your customers. You probably know a lot about what matters to them, what they think about you, and how much they are willing to pay to buy to what you sell. But how much do you know about what your employees think, what matters to them and how far they are willing to go to defend your brand? Chances are you’ve got an employee satisfaction survey that HR does every year or so, and you’ve got a few programs in place to communicate more openly; but do you really know the effect that implicit corporate values are having on your ability to deliver on your brand promise, or for that matter on your basic corporate responsibilities?

To say that “we do a lot of communicating about our values” is not a great answer to this question. You talk, but do they hear? You act, but do you show the way? You lead, but does anyone follow? IBM for one, gets credit for asking the question, and doing it in a way that has demonstrated a great use of their commercial technology. Their 2003 Values Jam took place over 72 hours and asked over 300,000 employees to rant, rave and recommend their ideas about what IBM does, how they act and what they stand for. Led from the top—Chairman and CEO Samual Palmisano—the jam yielded a rich supply of ideas, criticisms and hard truths about the gap between IBM’s image and their actual behaviour. The information was so powerful it influenced strategic direction at the highest level and brought a sharp focus to the priorities of the corporation.

http://www.ibm.com/ibm/values/us/

You might or might not like the value set that emerged (it seems a bit generic from a distance) but you have to like the way the jam invited everyone to have a say, and then followed up to demonstrate that the event made a real impact. It went big, without seeming like a free-for-all.

While your organization might not be able to engineer an online values jam of your own, the principles behind it can apply to anyone: go broad to ask employees (and suppliers, partners and customers) what they think your corporate values really are; get them to be clear about the “values gap”: the difference between what you say and what you do, follow up to demonstrate that you were listening, and then go on record as supporting a tight set of values that are reinforced through the behaviours of management. These days, more employees actually care about corporate values and how they translate into day-to-day job realities for them. Many need and want a clearer idea of how to make the tough calls that accompany the distributed accountabilities of the modern corporation.

If you do use on online forum to discuss values, consider giving it a permanent life as a Values Cafe, or a Brand Blog (a Brog?). Keep the dialogue candid and open and you’ll never lose touch with corporate values again.

Coming soon: The Three Corporate Values: The Deep, The Differentiating and The Deltas