Tag: 31 practices

Values and Governance

October 21, 2021

Word Cloud with Corporate Governance related tags

Your organisation’s values are the heart and foundation upon which everything you do is built. They serve as signposts or as a compass, guiding the way to fulfilling your organisation’s mission and purpose.

When you have strong organisational values, they shape how your organisation runs and is governed, allow your employees to feel aligned and connected, and make it simpler for customers to build a bond with you, when they know clearly who you are and what values you stand by.

Values-driven Culture

Having a values-driven culture means having clear and present organisational values that enable employees to align with your organisation emotionally as well as physically. Centring your company culture around your values will bring your entire workforce together to deliver on your mission and purpose.

With 94% of executives and 88% of employees believing a strong culture at work is important in a successful organisation, there has never been a better time to ask yourself, who are you and what does your company value.

Culture can be created and driven from both ends of the employee scale. New employees don’t learn about company culture from leaflets and 5-minute briefings. They learn by observing the behaviours of the leaders and colleagues around them, especially long serving ones.

Even though it is the leadership and governance teams that decide the culture and direction of the organisation, it will be the employees that are responsible for embodying those messages and passing them on to customers through their words and most importantly their behaviour and actions.

If you want a strong values-driven culture, ask yourself; do I really know and believe in my organisation’s values? Do I behave in a way that aligns with them? Or only pay them lip service.

The most important thing to remember when creating a healthy workplace culture is that ‘do as I say’ cultures are hardly ever successful in the long term, they breed resentment and unfairness among the organisation and are a barrier to full employee alignment. When you focus on a ‘do as I do’ approach and embody your values in all you say and do, your employees and customers will recognise and reward it.

What makes for good governance?

Understanding values and why they are important can also help play a role in establishing and maintaining good governance at your organisation. There are five key considerations, that serve well as a structure within which to plan culture and behaviour going forward.

The first of these is fairness. Any organisational planning that takes place needs to frame your company values in how they affect everyone that engages with you. Planning that only considers the needs of senior management will always result in an unhealthy culture, especially when other employees taking part in the work are not represented or treated equally.

They say ‘the bad’ always rolls downhill. This kind of culture is completely toxic to an organisation’s performance. Cultures of blame and blame shifting don’t serve anyone and only hurt the relationship between different levels of employees. Take accountability for your plans and actions. If something is going wrong, don’t ask “what did they do wrong”, ask, “what did I do wrong?” Especially if you are in a position of power and influence. What could you do to better communicate the values and culture of the organisation so that failings are mitigated?

Good governance needs responsible thought and action. It requires people who are able to see the whole picture and willing to bear the weight that comes with being both a governor and a leader. Too often, governors don’t get involved at all levels. Ask yourself, when was the last time I spoke to a customer or front-facing colleague?

The last two are the hardest to find among organisation culture. Having the integrity to do the right thing, (even when it costs) and the transparency to be open and honest when mistakes are made.

The pandemic highlighted this in a dramatic way. The organisations that have been most successful at navigating these complex and unexpected developments, are those that have spoken publicly and honestly to their uncertainty.

Employees, customers, and shareholders, it turns out, all much prefer organisations that are transparent, even when faced with challenges, compared with those that would hide how badly affected they are. Publicly doing the right thing can be hard, its hard to predict how others will react, but overall being honest builds trust and allows people to feel aligned with and bonded to the culture of the organisation because of it.

What can you do to encourage the above approach as a framework for effective governance? You might have noticed that we have not referred to audit, inspection, and reporting because, whilst these might have a place, they represent a means to an end and need to be handled with care to avoid an unintended consequence (which might be the opposite of the objective!). Focus on what you can do to move away from box ticking to pass inspections, or blame shifting to shirk responsibility and move into well considered, authentic governance. Quality governance is a combination of heart and head, in that order.

SERVICEBRAND

Why not connect with us and see how the SERVICEBRAND approach can help you determine the right courses of action when the desired standards aren’t being met and transform sentiment and platitudes into real and affirmative action.

Values in Crisis

October 7, 2021

Directions to crisis and opportunity

The Covid-19 pandemic, while bringing with it immense suffering, has also brought the opportunity to re-examine and re-evaluate our values and beliefs. It has let us bear witness to those companies and corporations that have shown a reaffirmation of their values, and also those that have shown a complete disregard for their espoused values in the way they have treated their employees and customers during the pandemic.

Examples like amazon sellers price gouging on PPE, and companies profiteering on other medical supplies, furloughing and/or laying off staff while still paying enormous bonuses to senior executives and capitalising on the lockdowns to force smaller companies out of business.

But there have also been positive examples such as businesses re-tasking their products and services to help their employees retain employment and their customers continue to access the goods and services they need in times of limitation and restriction.

Global health pandemics aren’t the only type of crisis that can dramatically affect a business. But a crisis of this scale gives a much wider view of the cultural and moral landscape our societies are built on.

Finding value

Understanding and assigning values to your business can be a difficult process. It requires a great deal of reflection about who you are, what you are offering and most importantly why you want to sell that product or offer that service in the first place.

We become who we are (consciously or not) through what we care about. We only need the space and safety to follow our values and we can create lives and companies that are successful because of how well others can relate to our message.

Our values set the tone for everything to come. They act as a frame of reference in our decision-making structures. They cast a spotlight on our individual and collective behaviours, engaging and directing us to better align with the kind of businesses we want to support and the people we want to be.

But the most important aspect of defining and operating in a specific set of values, is that they are consistent. In this way the reputation and heritage of the company can begin to grow, this builds trust with the consumer base, and other stakeholders letting them feel secure in where they have placed their purchasing power or other type of relationship.

Authenticity in a crisis

Whether facing a crisis or not 86% of customers are driven by a desire for authentic interactions with the businesses and services they engage with, especially when those offerings demonstrate core values that closely align with those of the customers.

Those companies that have been upfront and authentic in their handling of the pandemic are the ones that have retained and seen the most support from their customer base. We hope that this is a sign that honesty really is the best policy, even during uncertain times.

Both individuals and organisations share common needs for safety and security, and while the go to may be to project an image of strength during a crisis, it is far more impactful and better for business to be up front about what is happening, being open about uncertainty with customers will build stronger bonds and connections through shared experience.

Repositioning

The companies that have been more able to the pandemic comfortably have done so because of their ability to be agile and flexible without compromising on their values. Companies like 58 Gin, that rapidly switched from producing gin, to the distillation and creation of hand sanitizer.

Maintaining operation, ensuring that employees still had work and the business remained profitable all came because of having strong core values, but being flexible enough to express them in different ways.

Repositioning a brand is often necessary as the times change and we head into an ever more uncertain future. Don’t fear having to make changes that are necessary for the survival of the business. Just ensure those changes don’t come at the expense of your values or authenticity. Consumer trust is hard to build and near impossible to regain once broken.

SERVICEBRAND

Whether its help choosing core values or assistance in implementing them, SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL can help you navigate the crises facing your business, shape your brand identity and align you authentically with your consumer base.

Companies that will successfully navigate any crisis are those with a strong and consistent set of core values, that have a purpose beyond profit.

Values Are For Living, Not Laminating

September 10, 2020

The Grenfell inquiry has recently heard witnesses from Rydon, the contractor which took on the design and build responsibility for the Grenfell Tower project from April 2014 onwards. A number of news stories were covered:

Rydon sought to keep more than £100,000 of the savings made by switching to the deadly aluminium composite material cladding on Grenfell Tower by hiding the true costs from its client.
The Rydon contract manager was described as using ‘Essex boy patter’ to push the cheaper cladding option for Grenfell.
There were some issues between Rydon employees and ‘vocal and aggressive’ Grenfell residents who complained about fire safety
Rydon’s project manager was unable to explain the presence of “shockingly poor workmanship” on cavity barriers in the cladding system installed on the building.
It is interesting to note that Rydon Group website states the following:

4 mistakes “values-driven” organizations make

July 31, 2020

In the six years since the first edition of The 31 Practices book was published, the topic of values has caught the imagination all over the world. It has become fashionable for organizations to describe themselves as values-driven and yet, for the stakeholders (employees, customers, service partners, local communities, investors, members, citizens) of some, if not many, of these organizations, there is a disconnect between the aspirational words and the experienced reality. To quote the legendary baseball coach, Yogi Berra “In theory there is no difference between practice and theory. In practice, there is”.

So why is it such a challenge to be a values-driven organisation… in practice? Here are four mistakes organizations can make, and you might be able to add more to the list. Consider the questions in each section and how they relate to your own organization.