The Manager - Edition 61 - The values in your organisation - By Rob Lambert
Welcome to the Cultivated Management Newsletter
Hi,
I hope you've had a cracking weekend and are looking forward to the week ahead.
I've had a great weekend with the family.
It was my Birthday this weekend and I had a lovely day.
As I get a year older I get a little wiser and also even more skeptical. For those than know me well, they'll wonder how I could get even more skeptical than I already was :)
Years ago I would choose a company to work for based on many dimensions, but one of the over-riding dimensions would be their company values. I'd read them on the website, ask people in the interview about them and of course, read them on the posters and wall-art that seems compulsory for HR teams to create. After all, if it's written down, it's true....right?
After many years of work I now pay very little attention to the values touted on the website, what people say in interviews and of course, the pointless wall art.
You see, very few companies actually live by the values they say. Some do - thank goodness, but in my experience most don't.
Instead, here's how you work out what a company's values are (and if you're brave you may choose to ask some of these in an interview!)
Who gets promoted and why?
Who at an executive level is there because they are genuinely very good at what they do - and who isn't very good at what they do. For those who aren't very good -how did they get a job? For what reason?
What behaviours are normal in the organisation?
What behaviours do the executives demonstrate?
What really drives decision making?
How does information flow, or not? And when it doesn't flow to the right people - why is that?
And if you answer these many questions, and no doubt more like them, you will discover the real values of the organisation. And the chances are, for some companies at least, they will be at odds with what the posters and wall-art say.
Bit heavy. But if you want to have an amazing team, build employee engagement and have high output - be congruent with the values people think the business have.
Go forth and be a manager who is congruent with the communicated company values - even if you're the only one to do so. Be brave. Be careful. Be congruent.
Rob..
My week in pictures
It's been weird weather here in the UK. 17 deg C in Reading on Tuesday. Tropical.
Cool Stuff To Click On
1 - 2000 sounds that humans use to communicate without using words.....epic.
2 - Don't be an over-confident leader. I stumbled once by being too sure I was right. humble inquiry wins every time.
3 - We're building bots to deal with customer interactions, and we're ruining the art of putting energy in to human interactions...Seth Godin on the Truth in Bots.
4 - Whaddya Got? A simple question to get meetings going and people prepared for them. I like it. Simple.
5 - Great start. Some UK companies are starting to share their ethnicity pay gap data publicly.
6 - Facial recognition is scanning you as you shop....
7 - Energized, educated, empowered - three traits of a good interaction. Leadership techniques from a CEO.
Thanks for reading this week's edition of The Manager.
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Thanks
Rob..