Stephen Billing’s Blog

In which my views on shared values are challenged.

A previous post entitled Three Reasons Not To Aim for Shared Values attracted a lot of comments. In particular, thanks to CV Harquail of the Authentic Organisations blog for challenging me with the following post. I reply below.

Stephen,
I’m not quite sure what it is about shared values that you are against (in this post)… Is it
- having any sharing at all?
- the idea that “shared values” are often but not always imposed by top mgmt?
- the idea that “words on the wall” are not actually ’shared’ values?
- the belief that sharing values means subordinating one’s personal self? You’ve got a lot going on here… worth teasing out.

Shared values, as I see them, (just as a start) are
(1) an integral, critical,
(2) ground-up, cohering element in an organization.
(3) Every organization has shared values of some kind — otherwise there would be no grounds for collective action.
(4) Values that are actually shared are not always the same as those denoted by mgmt as “shared values”.
(5) Sharing some values with your co-members doesn’t need to preclude being authentic and retaining your own values.
How do these claims about values fit with what you want to challenge?

Here is my response.

First of all, let me summarise the argument of my previous post:

• The very act of setting out to establish shared values assumes they are necessary to make the organisation a better place to work
   

• Shared values are often part of an initiative to bring about the desired organisation that the top people want 
   
• The organisation will be more harmonious if it has shared values. This assumes in a taken-for-granted way that the absence of conflict is good for the organisation and so is the absence of diversity of values
   
• I take the stance that conflict is a part of all human relating and conflict cannot be legistlated away through prescribing shared values, no matter how much involvement there is from representatives of the troops
   
• Shared values takes the focus off what is going on right now.

By the way, if you have read this far, the potential conflict between my point of view and CV’s is no doubt a part of the attraction. As I say, conflict is a part of all human relating!

1. Are shared values integral and critical? To say they are integral and critical implies that without shared values there will not be a good organisation. How do you know the values are shared? Inevitably through a process of working them out and creating artifacts such as posters that remind people of the values. Values, though, are in conflict with each other and are tested in the crucible of personal experience, as people face particular situations. For example, in a hospital, dealing with someone who has been waiting for 4 hours or a new person who will die if they are not attended to immediately is the kind of situation that those working in hospitals often face.This sort of dilemma and conflict is a far cry from the exercises of shared values.
    
2. Far from being ground up activities, most shared values exercises are top down with the involvement of people that amounts to a manipulation of those with less power – involve them and we can influence them to our way of thinking. Cohering can be seen as a pattern of relating. Such cohesion is an emergent property of self-organising human interation, it does not come about as a result of an exercise in shared values.
    
3. As I see it, the grounds for collective action are local human interaction and power relating. To say that shared values are a motive for collective action is saying that the cause of change is rational thought through articulating shared values that will then give rise to collective action. I think it is not rational thought through shared values that generates collective action, but rather the interaction itself between diverse human beings that gives rise to the potential for transformative change and collective action. The values that have been previously agreed play a part as the intentions of an individual, but collective action is dependent on the interplay of intentions between all the people involved, not just the coalition of the most powerful.
    
4. I agree that the values decreed by management are not always the actual shared values of those in the organisation. This is part of the reason we should not bother with posters. But what values are actually shared?  I think we share our collective identities from those groups we identify with, and these form our ideologies or social beliefs.
    
5. Your comment about not losing your own identity highlights that we all have collective and individual identities. Individual selves are formed from the silent conversations we have with ourselves, influenced by and inluencing our collective identities, which are formed from our views about what those we identify with think about us.

To summarise:

As human beings in organisations, we are interacting with each other based on their own intentions, values, ideologies, experiences of the past and expectations for the future. The organisational and individual reality that occurs for people emerges from this interweaving of multiple aspects of human and organisational experience.

Values are only one aspect of the interplay and whether or not these values are shared with others is not that relevant. Values are generalisations based on what we think others believe. They are abstract ideals only and come into reality when negotiated in particular organisational situations. The conflict of values is commonly glossed over or forgotten in most discussions about shared values. For example, the conflict that occurs when acting in your organisation’s interest seems to run against your own interest.

The reality is that we are all dealing with situations where the outcome is unknown. Our values help us to resolve a specific situation but the conflict doesn’t go away. It has to be resolved again next time there is a patient who has been waiting nearly four hours. The circumstances will be a little different and judgement will still be required.

I think that the conflict and uncertainty of negotiating organisational situations is not acknowledged, in fact it is hidden by calls for shared values. 

An earlier thread on shared values has been updated over the last 2 days by a number of comments – view the comments to see the thread.

There is a bit of discussion going on in the comments to my post entitled Three Reasons not to Aim for Shared Values.

The argument centres around whether the alternative to shared values is the replacement of the organisation’s espoused shared values with other shared values about embracing diversity.

My point is that diverse organisational participants will lead to increased likelihood of novel outcomes, but that these could be destructive as much as they are creative. Conflict levels will also increase and there is no guarantee that those in the organisation will be able to tolerate the increased degree of conflict.

Yet, because we are humans, we cannot step outside of human relating and we therefore have no choice in our organisations but to continue to navigate this conflict and diversity as we seek ways to go on together doing our work.

Shared values are a complete fallacy and the pursuit of them will not help your organisation one bit.

The idea of writing values on a poster assumes that if everyone in the organisation shares the same values, the organisation will be a better place to work.

These shared values are articulated on posters as a way of bringing about the future that is desired by the powerful people in the organisation.

I guess it is assumed that people will be able to get on well if they share the same values and it will create a more harmonious place to work. It is also expected that if everyone shares the same values then the organisation will perform better.

The aspirations of these values are idealisations of a future in which the tension of conflict is avoided, diversity is embraced and openness and trust are pervasive.

Here are three reasons why you should rip up your values posters and stop trying to achieve shared values in your organisation.

Reason 1

In complexity science, novelty and new patterns arise from the interaction of diverse agents. Using this as an analogy for organisations suggests that innovation and novelty arise from the interaction of diverse people. If everyone has the same values, then this will squash innovation and new ideas in your organisation.

Instead, go for people with different values and watch the new ideas arise. At the same time watch out for how people negotiate the conflict that comes with it (reason 2 below).

Reason 2

Human relating is inherently conflictual, and these shared values totally miss this important point about being human. It is how we negotiate this conflict that determines whether we are a tightly-knit, high performing organisation, whether we blow apart in a spectacular bankruptcy or whether we potter along in the same old, same old way.

Reason 3

The idealisations on the values posters ignore the messy uncertainty of taking the next step together. In any project or organisational situation, people are negotiating with each other what to do next. The future is always unknown and people are working out what to do next in ways that enable them to go on together. They cannot just do anything, because of the risk of destroying relationships and then not being able to carry on together. The idealisations on the posters distract attention from the messiness of not knowing what the outcome of what you do will be, in an unknown future.

Sources

Joas – The Genesis of Values

Stacey and Griffin – Complexity and the Experience of Leading Organizations

Shaw – Changing Conversations in Organizations

Values are constantly being negotiated in specific situations. They do not exist on their own, outside of human action.

An earlier post said that writing values on a poster assumes that these values have some meaning in their own right, independent of context or situation.

While values have enduring qualities, they must continually be negotiated afresh in specific situations. A value only has meaning when it is applied in a specific situation. And then it has meaning again when it is applied in another situation.

Further, values are often in conflict with each other.

For example, nurses in hospitals are continually negotiating the value of seeing a patient within a specific time frame, and other values such as seeing those with the most urgent need first.

Writing values on posters makes no sense to me. It would be more useful to discuss situations in which these conflicting values arise. For example, in a mental health facility, does keeping the house clean take priority over taking a lonely or depressed resident for an outing?

Joas – The Genesis of Values

Stacey and Griffin – Complexity and the Experience of Leading Organizations

It makes no sense to derive a set of values in a rational way.

In my previous post I said that writing values on a poster assumes that the values of a group of people can be prescribed rationally by working them out.

It makes no sense to come up with a set of rationally conceived values. By definition, values are not rational.

Values come from a deep sense of what it is right to do. They have an attractive, uplifting, unrestrictive sense of the ideal. There is something compelling about the values that we hold, and yet it is entirely voluntary that we commit to these values. Value commitments arise from key intense experiences that we have and give life meaning and purpose. You cannot decree a purpose in life.

Values are the highest expression of our free will, and are intensely personal.

It is a nonsense to rationally decree a set of values and expect employees to hold to them. Other than that I don’t feel strongly about it.

Sources

Joas – The Genesis of Values

Stacey and Griffin – Complexity and the Experience of Leading Organizations  

Most organisations have spent time and money identifying their values and putting them on posters. This is a waste of time because it represents a fundamental misunderstanding about what values are.

Most of my client organisations have statements of their values written on posters, shown in prominent positions around the office. Many have created other artefacts for displaying these values, such as stands for the desk, cards, notepads. Clearly these organisations have invested considerable money and time of their human resources and corporate communications departments in coming up with these statements.

Obviously the return on this investment is hard to measure in terms of dollars and cents, and so must be articulated in non-specific terms of "company commitment" and the like.

I think there is absolutely no return on this investment because working out the values and communicating them to people is a misguided activity in the first place.

First, it assumes that the values of a group of people can be prescribed rationally by working them out. Second, it assumes that the values exist in their own right, independent of context. It is as though these value statements have some intrinsic meaning of their own. Third, it assumes that if people follow these values the organisation will be improved.

Do you think these assumptions are valid? Can a set of values be thought out rationally and then prescribed for others? Do these values as written down have meaning of their own independently of context? Will everyone having the same values make a better organisation? 

I will be posting daily on this topic for the next three days…