I've always made it a point to ask about organizational values in compensation philosophy sessions and in every discovery conversation at the front end of a problem solving engagement. The responses can vary from "Values? Don't remember but I think you can find them on our web site" to a passionate discourse on the guiding principles of how people behave and make choices in the organization.
Some of the more interesting -- and frankly most helpful from a reward standpoint -- exchanges I've had about values have been centered on the concept of accidental values. Renowned author and speaker Patrick Lencioni first coined that phrase in his book The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business, where he takes the notion of organizational values and breaks it into four distinct categories:
1. Core Values. These are the deeply ingrained principles that guide all of a company’s actions. They serve as cultural cornerstones and must never be compromised. They are the source of a company’s distinctiveness – their brand identity.
2. Aspirational Values. These are the values a company needs or wants to have to bring future success, but currently lacks. Aspirational values are beneficial, yet they need to be carefully managed so that they don’t dilute the core.
3. Permission-to-Play Values. These simply reflect the minimum behavior and social style of team members. These values qualify candidates for acceptance on a team, yet they are not the defining characteristics that set an organization apart from its competition.
4. Accidental Values. These arise spontaneously within a team over time, without being intentionally cultivated by leadership. They can be beneficial or they can produce negative forces, even to the point of toxic.
The concept of accidental values is particularly important to those of us who practice in the field of rewards because reward delivery - who and what gets reinforced with rewards - can be a key signal of an accidental value.
A few examples can help illuminate this point:
One leadership team realized that they had an accidental value of minimizing their investment in front-line workers, paying their customer facing employees as little as possible. How did they discover this? By realizing (and credit to them for their honesty and willingness to look without flinching at their decisions) that they had a long history of making the lowest investment in wage and structure adjustments that would still get them in "a competitive range" for these roles.
Another company's management group came to realize that they had an accidental value of reinforcing those who stop at nothing (including stomping all over their colleagues and subordinates) to maximize their personal revenue generation. How did they know? Because these toxic individuals -- well known to everyone in the organization -- consistently earned the biggest awards under their incentive program (and scored the biggest merit increases as well).
You won't find accidental values framed on the boardroom wall or memorialized on the website, but employees know that they are there and their presence may mean that you are investing precious compensation funds in actively undermining your desired culture.
I find that using the framework of company values and particularly the concept of accidental values is a useful approach for confronting leadership teams about reward practice disconnects -- gaps between what they are saying and what the organization is doing with its compensation spend -- in a way that gets their attention. With that, this could be a good addition for all of us to carry in our mental toolbox.
Are there accidental values lurking in your workplaces?
Ann Bares is a Partner in Altura Consulting Group LLC, which supports organizations through the design and third party administration of custom and private label total compensation surveys. She earned her M.B.A. at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School and enjoys hiking, reading and hanging out with family in any spare time.
Creative Commons image "Dominoes" by Becky Bokern
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