Musings

Whenever I speak to a CEO about their company values  I ask them to describe what the word teamwork means to them. Their description, which could be along the lines of "the combined action of our employees, achieving a stated aim" is always different from mine, which is "the team always comes first". The point is that everybody has their own take on the word. They are all in the same ballpark, but all slightly different and this illustrates the point I am trying to make nicely. Having a list of values, without the expected behaviours associated with those values, is useless and actually dangerous. There is too much room for interpretation.

As part of the CultureGene process we take companies through the values definition as well as the expected behaviours definition. This becomes a code for the company to work by, giving employees the guidelines on how to make the right decisions when challenges or conflicts arise, and priorities need to be made.