How corporate values get hijacked and misused

Leaders know company value statements often become nothing more than cosmetic window dressing. What appears less common is their understanding of the destructive consequences of allowing that to happen.

They reflexively grasp for the culture lever, assuming the act of crafting and publishing a set of values actually has the power to do something.

They are shocked when cynicism, resentment and eventually settling on indifference are how the organisation actually responds.

People want their company’s values to be sacrosanct. And when they aren’t, the logical conclusion they draw is that the organisation doesn’t mean what it says, and that behaving in ways that contradict the values is perfectly acceptable.

The painful result of widespread misuse of company values, according to one major study, is that only 23 per cent of U.S. employees strongly agree that they can apply their organisation’s values to their work everyday, and only 27 per cent “believe in” their organisation’s values.

Another comprehensive study based on more than 1,000 firms in the Great Places to Work database reveals a strong correlation between corporate financial performance and the extent to which employees believe their company’s espoused values are practised.

Values hold the power to drive meaningful differences in performance by shaping a culture, and when misused, can undermine performance with toxic force.

Of the many conditions I have seen in which company values are a powerful force for good, three stand out as uniquely important.

First, accountability for living them exists top to bottom. People are selected, evaluated and trained on how to embody them. Second, the values drive self-honesty, and when the company fails to live up to them, leaders are the first to admit it. And finally, writing a value statement is used as the start of an ongoing, transformational journey, not the conclusion of one.

When these three conditions aren’t present, values can get hijacked and misused. Here’s how it happens:

Without accountability, values become a weapon to punish
When a company has failed to genuinely embed its values throughout the organisation, their default use is often seen as a way to shame and punish. In one organisation, the alleged commitment to “values accountability” became so twisted that statements such as “She’s not aligned with our values” or “I can’t support that decision because I don’t see how it reflects the values” became so reflexive that they shut down honest conversation.

One interviewee in our organisation assessment admitted, “If you want to get someone you don’t like thrown out of the organisation, just accuse them of not ‘living the values’.” True accountability for living up to a company’s values requires objective behavioural measures and agreed-upon standards that will be consistently applied across the whole organisation.

In this company’s case, senior leaders who were criticised for not modelling the values quickly ousted their accusers for “not being team players”.

The very values intended to unify and inspire the culture had turned it into a poisonous gang rivalry. Eventually, the very expensive “culture change” effort was scrapped and the values simply ignored.
It’s painfully common for values statements to get used as yardsticks to discredit leaders people don’t want to support. They can also be magnifying glasses highlighting a leader’s hypocrisy, creating a reasonable excuse not to change one’s own behaviour. When value statements are used to justify harmful behaviour, it only accelerates their loss of credibility.

Without self-honesty, values deflect attention away from misconduct.

It’s very common for chronic bad behaviour or a scandal to provoke a renewed focus on values. Genuine failure to live up to the company’s values should be acknowledged with honest humility and resolve to correct.

Without self-honesty, leaders feel compelled to simply appear resolute. Instead of amending their actions, they amend the values, choosing words antithetical to the known cultural norm needing to be cured. “Urgency” suddenly becomes a value when time to market cycles are industry lagging and pressure from the Board is mounting. “Transparency” becomes a value when there’s been a cover up. “Diversity and inclusion” become values after too many discrimination lawsuits.

When a new value is declared with the unspoken intention of fixing the people asked to embrace it, you can bet embracing it is the last thing that happens. Values end up shielding the organisation from honesty when they should fortify it with honesty. Like great magicians who use sleight-of-hand deflection to trick audiences, campaigns touting new values arouse the illusion of commitment while the real sources of bad behaviour remain lurking in the background.

The difficult work of transformation should start with defining core values. However for some companies, their creation is the entire change journey. Teams of people across the organisation gathered around whiteboards and flip charts rigorously debate the merits of different values.

All of that is followed by the massive “roll out” campaign. People fill workshops where executives tell heartwarming stories about how the values have shaped their careers and will distinguish their organisation in future.

Entertaining videos are distributed for everyone to “watch and discuss” as a team. T-shirts, screen savers, mouse pads and posters with the values inundate the workplace. For months, the organisation’s attention is consumed with the perception that things are really changing and that we are “all in this together”. For some, it’s the first sign of hope after a long drought of stagnancy. I spoke at an event where a company had completed such a campaign about six months earlier.

I sensed that not much had happened since. I asked one employee what had actually changed since the campaign and she responded, “Just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed.”
The destruction from such values’ misuse can’t be overstated. The emotional carnage can be irreparable and the performance opportunity cost staggering. An organisation would be far better off not having any stated values than to develop them only to misuse them.

True cultural norms drive results, are shaped by strategy and engender strong communal pride. Culture, in such companies, becomes a competitive advantage and attracts top talent. Values that everyone knows mean nothing weaken an organisation’s confidence, integrity and ability to compete, rendering its culture a liability. The forces left to shape behaviour become shame, pessimism and cowardice.

A company’s values must reflect what makes it uniquely successful, conveying to employees, “This is what it takes to succeed here.” Processes such as strategy, selection, rewards, performance management and resource allocation must have values woven deeply into them with undeniable consistency between actions and words. If a company isn’t willing to do the very hard work of embedding its values into every fibre of the organisation and hold people accountable for living them, they ought not bother writing them down.