ALEX CAMPBELL'S TUMBLELOG

On the value of corporate values

By Alex Campbell

One aspect of modern corporate personality disorder that I’ve never understood is the obsession with codifying an organisation’s ‘values’.

We’ve all seen the annual reports emblazoned with stock images of multi-ethnic people holding hands alongside headings that say things like “Working together with shared values”.

We’ve all marvelled at the clumsy propaganda that lines the walls of large corporations, blaring nonsense statements such as “Humility with ability”.

We’ve all sat in workshops where the leaders of a business brainstorm its values, inevitably settling on five or six bland, uncontroversial words. “Honesty”. “Passion”. “Creativity”. “Collaboration”. “Courage”.

And we’ve all seen the press releases issued by companies that get themselves into trouble and try to talk their way out of it by reiterating their commitment to values of “integrity” and “respect”.

I have always believed that this pursuit of synthetic organisational ‘values’ is as bizarre as it is pointless.

Here is an example of a corporate value statement that I’ve chosen at random, taken from the website of one of the world’s largest companies:

Our Values

As a company, and as individuals, we value integrity, honesty, openness, personal excellence, constructive self-criticism, continual self-improvement, and mutual respect. We are committed to our customers and partners and have a passion for technology. We take on big challenges, and pride ourselves on seeing them through. We hold ourselves accountable to our customers, shareholders, partners, and employees by honoring our commitments, providing results, and striving for the highest quality.

Can you guess what company this is? I’m sure you can’t. I wouldn’t have been able to either. This ridiculously broad statement could have been from pretty much any company on earth.

Let’s break it down line by line.

Are there any companies or individuals who would really say they’re opposed to “integrity” or “honesty”?

Can we not take it for granted that “openness” and “personal excellence” are expected of corporate citizens?

Of course, this company is “committed to our customers and partners”. That must be reassuring for its customers and its partners.

This company has “a passion for technology”, unlike all those companies that don’t care about technology and still send inter-office correspondence via tubes.

This company takes on “big challenges” - like reading their values statement without falling asleep or wanting to jam an HR person into a stationery cupboard.

This company holds itself “accountable” by “honoring commitments”, “providing results”, and “striving for the highest quality”. In other words, they do their jobs.

All in all, this company’s values statement is a laundry list of meaningless platitudes. I wonder how many employees of this company would even know this values statement exists, or would care, or could possibly remember any part of it if asked?

If you’re interested, the company is Microsoft. I took their values statement verbatim from here: http://www.microsoft.com/about/en/us/default.aspx. And I don’t mean to pick on Microsoft, although they’re an easy target. No doubt almost every global company has at some point created an equally bland and vague list of supposed values.

Of course, not all organisations’ values statements are completely meaningless. For contrast, compare Microsoft’s values statement with Google’s famous mantra: “Don’t be evil”. Google’s mantra is a simple, memorable guiding principle that every Googler can use every day when they’re making decisions. It is specific, it is meaningful, and it is three words instead of Microsoft’s seventy-three words.

What’s most interesting about corporate values is how dissonant an organisation’s stated values usually are with its reality. Often a business’s stated values are actually a reflection of its deepest fears and most profound weaknesses.

A business that feels the need to remind everyone that it is “Courageous” is usually deeply conservative.

A business that talks about how it values “Honesty” is usually mired in back-stabbing bureaucracy.

A business that talks about the important of “Excellence” is often profoundly disfunctional.

A business that constantly tells us it is “Customer oriented” usually has a deep and abiding contempt for its customers.

A business that harps on about “Transparency” has many shameful secrets that it wants to keep concealed.

Ultimately, the reality is that actions speak far louder than words. An organisation’s true values are reflected in how it behaves, not what it says.

True values cannot be set in a planning session or communicated on a PowerPoint slide. They cannot be contrived by a committee. And posting them on an intranet or a noticeboard doesn’t make them real.

The only thing that can make corporate values real is behaviour, and in particular the example set by an organisation’s leaders.

So my perhaps naive suggestion would be to forget about bland statements of corporate values and just say, “Let’s all behave like the decent adult human beings that we are, and focus on making great stuff for our customers to buy.”