The Beating Heart of Organizational Culture

Core values are more than just a bunch of adjectives, they are the descriptors of observable behaviors that are part of everything you do. They are the leading indicator of your brand.

Core values are those intractable principles which we hold that form the foundation on which we perform, work, and behave. There are an entire universe of values, but some of them are so primary, so important to us that throughout changes in society, government, politics, and technology they are immutable.

In an ever-changing world, core values are constant. Core values are not descriptions of the work we do or the strategies we employ to accomplish our mission. Instead, they underlie our work, drive how we interact with each other, and steer which strategies we employ to fulfill our mission.

Much has been written about core values, and the importance of them to organizational culture. And even more organizations have words that they pass out to new staff during their onboarding process. But few understand how profoundly difficult it is to have core values mean something that drives productive organizational culture and brand.

Harvard Business Review published an article that shared some great insights into how true core values can inflict pain.

"If you’re not willing to accept the pain real values incur, don’t bother going to the trouble of formulating a values statement."

Why is it so painful and difficult?

Consistency and Humility, Top Down

Once we have the words and the descriptions of observable behaviors that accompany those words, we have to live by them in earnest and we need to be held accountable to them. And if these values are the brand, drive organizational culture, we as leaders have to be the embodiment of the behaviors and demonstrate our humility when (not should) we fail to uphold them.

Each of us is human, we make mistakes, we fail. As leaders, we need to demonstrate our commitment to our core values by owning when we fail and doubling down on course correction so all can see.

Additionally, we need to imbue our core values into everything we do. Every meeting we have. Every problem we collaborate to solve. Every piece of feedback given and received. And that operationalized practice needs to be agile so that it grows and evolves with the organization.

So how can we make it a bit easier?

Strategic Partnership with Human Resources

Organizational Development (OD) is the key to lessening the difficulty of truly implementing a core value-centric organizational culture.

Human Resources executives understand the power of OD and are hungry to partner with senior executives to drive positive cultural innovations. They are uniquely positioned within organizations to create powerful change that allows for easier alignment with overarching goals because they interact with every department, every employee through recruitment, onboarding, and all the administrative support they provide staff.

Strategic partnership with OD oriented HR executives can make for an easier implementation of inculcating core values and their observable behaviors throughout the organization.

But what does strategic partnership with HR look like? It is as simple as including HR in all conversations about organizational strategy and discussions.

• Thinking about restructuring your departments? Pull your HR executive into the conversation.

• Contemplating a new role to bolster revenue? Ask your HR executive to help turn the cube.

• Struggling with a team delivering on KPIs, include the HR executive in the collaboration to solve the problem.

• Wanting to promote a stellar performer, talk to your OD executive BEFORE making the call.

Well, why? All of these things seem like business decisions. The Human Resources executive can provide unique insights into the unintended consequences to the organization, the collective culture, employee engagement by making the decision. They can provide alternative solutions to achieving the desired business objectives that will also optimize culture and reinforce organizational core values.

Iterate

Making core values central to organizational culture is tough and imperfect work that is irritatingly dynamic. The world perpetually changes. Needs of staff and the business evolve. And so too must organizational culture.

It is critical to leverage the strategic partnership with Human Resources to ensure that there is an agile and responsive mechanism to iterate the tactics to imbue core values throughout the organization as well as the observable behaviors to ensure they are modern, relevant, and inclusive.