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So why do values and people matter so much? Mainly because I believe they are key to sustainability in our organisations – not sustainability in the “green” sense – but sustainability in building an organisation that can survive, or even thrive, in the medium to long-term
It seems to me that we have had a history over the last 20 years of organisational based on MAXIMISE, where we look at one key measure – typically profit/earnings – and seek to maximise this at the cost of all other measure. Personal or corporate greed become the prevailing behaviour and short term-ism (especially when satisfying the financial markets demands) become the prevalent approach.
So what is the alternative? I believe we will see organisations both large and small begin to adopt an approach perhaps best described as OPTIMISE, where we start to be concerned with balancing performance across a range of measures. It might sound a bit “Kaplan & Norton” and harking back to balanced scorecards (which would be no bad thing in my opinion), but I think it is more than this in that this move will start to place a much higher emphasis on our people and our values.
What does this mean? The comment “our people are our most important asset” is usually closely followed by an explanation of how much an organisation spends on training per head, but emphasising our people and values has to be much more than this. It must be an intentional approach to understanding our values, culture and how these are exhibited through the behaviours we accept (or encourage). It must see these as a key part of organisational strategy and a driver of competitive advantage. If we place the right emphasis on our values and culture we will start to see how important our people (and their behaviours) really are to organisational success, and start to invest in these key stakeholders for a medium to long-term return.
Maximise or optimise – which does your organisation favour?
I couldn’t agree more, Paul. When corporate and employees’ values are aligned, which happens as a consequence of developing and then maintaining a shared work culture, you achieve significant performance.
Good stuff Paul … In my humble opinion, alignment of corporate and employee values is not sufficient to establish the conditions for business sustainability. What the values are is critically important … if the shared values are selfish and exploitive then both the business and the employees will fail to achieve sustainable prosperity.
In my view, business sustainability can only come through a genuine “tripple bottom line” approach to business … first care for the environment, second care for people and third, look after the finances. Generally, if a responsible approach is adopted to the first two, the third will take care of itself. If the value system reflects this approach, the business should build a very healthy reputation and client support base and do well (prosper in all areas, not just financial).
All businessmen should read James, especially James 5:1-12, James 4:1-3 and James 4:13-17 and take a long, hard look at his business plan to see if it needs changing!