Yesterday I posted about what you have in your heart is what comes out in your actions as regards spirituality and relationships, but what does this mean from a leadership perspective?  How can you be better at leadership by knowing this?

Picture by Lumaxart

Values vs Culture

Every organisation has values.  In fact, most publish those values and the leaders talk about them all the time.  Here’s some values you may have heard from organisations from time to time:

• Be accountable.

• Manage risks.

• Integrity.

• Work honestly.

All good values for a company to have don’t you think?  By the way, these are direct from AIG’s code of conduct.

Another value we will all have heard many times:

• Our employees are our greatest asset.

And how many organisations truly mean that?

But espoused values are very different to actual values, or the culture of an organisation.

Why?

It’s simple really.  As with spirituality and relationships, what you have in your heart is what comes out.  For organisations it works this way…

The owners and bosses can say what they want about values, but it’s their actions that show their heart.

And then, the employees, whose actions are normally the main outflow of culture, take in just what they see being done.  So you can tell an employee that integrity is a corporate value but if she sees you acting contrary to that stated value, she will mirror your actual actions.

How do you change Organisational Culture?

It’s not easy… but here’s how not to do it:

Don’t:

• Make a big deal about corporate values

• Get glossy posters printed with the values listed

• Even talk about them unless you’re doing them…

Do:

• Find out what culture your company actually has (you may need to ask someone who will be honest with you)

• Start treating people how you would like to be treated

• Make decisions based on the values you’d like your organisation to be known for, even if it means less profit at the time

• Be seen to really live the values you want

How long will it take for a culture to turn around.  That depends on the size of the organisation but it’s my experience that staff are quick to pick up on positive changes of this nature.  The real difficulty is getting the leaders to change!

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