Values Alignment

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Submitted by Ross Liston on 1 week 2 days ago

Description:

As a manager I would want to know whether my employees and colleagues are working for the organization or against it, and that they were being the best versions of themselves – without having to make any compromises of their character.

Unfortunately in my experience traditional performance management focuses on a varying suite of metrics, often structured around a bastardized rendition of the Balanced Score Card (but without the connectivity and cause-effect relationships intended by the founders of the BSC, Kaplan and Norton). The three biggest shortcomings that go with this are i) the same metrics are applied to all irrespective of whether they're the company receptionist or head of sales, ii) the system is personalized for everyone, so that there is no means to compare apples with apples at all and iii) allow the discretionary element to be so heavily weighted that the assessment is completely nullified (in favor of favoritism).

So why not rather opt for an assessment of alignment against organizational values as determined through a 360 review - because it doesn't matter where you reside in the organization; your alignment to organizational values can be assessed, without the need of absurd tweaking requirements. It does however require organizational values to be carefully articulated and explained by demonstrable behaviors as expected by superiors and subordinates (viz. what would ‘respect’ look like to your boss versus someone reporting to you?).

First Steps (extra credit) :

The implementable steps might entail:

Define a suite of agreed values, say 5 – 8 max
Define the associated behaviors, say 3 – 5 per value
Define a scoring scale, such as a 3-point Likert scale
Implement it from top down in accordance with a 360-type review
Monitor and assess organisation perceptions around new system and track to how it helps the organization

In terms of sustainable change management practices, thorough engagement and communications needs to take place from early on – and it may be best to run it in parallel with the legacy system until fully rolled-out and integrated into the business

Nan Mehta

1 day 3 hours ago

I agree with your concept and think that aligning behavior with values is key to ensuring organizations are ethical as well as successful. It also encourages everyone, including the manger to be a "role model" and work/lead by example. A hidden benefit is that the values chosen by an organization would tell vendors, prospective employees and clients what kind of culture the company upholds. This in itself could be a very powerful marketing and talent attraction tool.

Greg Stevenson

2 days 5 hours ago

I like the direction this is going. I feel it can go a lot further with respect to education, governance, innovation, incentivisation, self-development, and remuneration if designed in a simple but sophisticated way.

Bjarte Bogsnes

3 days 3 hours ago

Ross,

At Statoil, where I work, we actually try to do what you recommend. Our company values and how business results are achieved count as much as business results themselves. The weighting is 50/50 in all consequences for career and rewards.

It is about creating consistency between what we say and what we do. How can we claim to be a values based company if values are completely absent in goal setting and performance evaluation?

It is much more difficult to set and evaluate behaviour goals than business goals. But our guiding star can not be what is simple, it has to be what is right.

Thanks,
Bjarte

Bob Lehto

1 week 3 hours ago

I really like your idea too. Although I generally think simpler is better, I suggest that the "associated behaviors" of a company reception should be perceived differently than the head of sales. Perhaps this simply means there are defined behaviors at associate, manager & executive level?

Ross Liston

1 week 2 days ago

How one performs at work (i.e. either working with the organisation or against it) is largely based on how personal and organisational values align. So that's what organisations should be considering.

Michele Zanini

1 week 1 day ago

Hi Ross, thanks for your contribution--I really like it. Your idea for a relatively simple way to gauge values alignment sounds like a great alternative to traditional approaches. It also reminds me of the way WL Gore evaluates performance, which is explicitly about how the person has lived the company's values. I have more on the WL Gore story in this related hackathon contribution, which I'd encourage you to check out: http://www.mixhackathon.org/content/impact-metric-0?theme=hackathon&sprint=

thanks again

Michele

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