Most of the companies that I’ve come across, state their values more as something that is required to be done, just to look professional. Much like the Mission and Vision statements.
It takes leaders, and companies of substance to evolve their values and be able to live by those values. It’s common to see values like customer centric, innovative, transparency, excellence, integrity, accountability etc. being bandied about on practically every company’s website.
It is however quite rare, to see the same companies actually living these values in their day to day functioning or what I would call organisational processes. A quick study of values touted by companies that have gone down for fraud, malpractice and downright ugly culture would prove this point.
What Good Companies Do?
Good companies and great places to work with, evolve processes and sub processes to run their business functions. These could be operational processes, the sales and marketing processes, people processes, financial processes and so on. To gain credibility with stakeholders and the markets and build up a great reputation it is essential that these processes are built with organisation’s core values in mind and relentlessly driven guided by these values.
It’s not very difficult to find a company professing transparency where employees are clueless about important policies and where the CEO hardly ever communicates to them about important issues. How could you be innovative if making a mistake is frowned upon, frank opinions not tolerated and not enough done to create an environment for new wild ideas.
To be able to align processes, first requirement is that they are developed and owned by a person who is steeped in those values. Second is the near paranoiac fervour with which they are driven.
Always from the top
Suppose you run a company that wants to be “customer centric” (as a core value), then you’ll ensure that your top performers look after this function and every functional team makes it their over riding priority. Escalation matrix is very rapid and inter functional processes are highly evolved and honed to perfection.
Stringent metrics are in place for measuring the customer complaint redressal levels and a detailed mechanism for realistic customer feedback is established. You strive to achieve unprecedented and best industry standards and you don’t relent till such high levels are achieved and sustained over time, every time.
Of course as with everything else, this too, starts from the top. It is hard to achieve, but not impossible. Your personal energy, belief and grit is put to test. Always remember that in the long run it’s more important and meaningful for you to have done “the harder right than the easier wrong”.