How to Put Your Organisational Values into Practice

All successful organisations have values to which they strive to adhere. Often, this is in the form of a mission statement or a “corporate vision.” But how many executives can say that their entire organisation, from the top to the bottom, put those values into practice every minute of every day?

Strongly-held values can create a strong organisational foundation. Unfortunately, a crack in that foundation can compromise the entire organisation. Often, employees will pay lip service to organisational values but fail to put them into daily practice. If a few employees or supervisors are not acting in concert with the corporate ethos, it can cause rifts in the corporate structure.

Sometimes those rifts manifest as too much employee turnover. Sometimes they manifest as underachievement. Whatever the case, they must be uncovered and corrected before they cause too much damage to the organisation.

Turn Values into Behaviours

The root cause is a disconnect between individual daily actions and corporate values. This is because most values are concepts, such as excellence, innovation, teamwork, customer focus and respect. The only way to ensure that values are being adhered to is to convert those values into behaviours that can be monitored and measured.

You must create and model behaviours for each value. This makes sure that everyone involved is able to understand the spirit of each value that is important to your organisation. Employees and executives alike now have an expectation of certain behaviours and are held accountable. This leaves no room for misinterpretation or subversion of organisational values.

Get Everyone Involved

Instead of dictating behaviours, it is more productive to involve everyone in the organisation. Ask employees what organisational values mean to them. Ask how the values make them feel. Have employees suggest behaviours that best reflect each specific organisational value. Ask them what they think they could do individually to better reflect those values on a daily basis.

Get Integral Involved

Integral Development can provide leadership development programs and management courses that help you bring your organisational values to life. Every course we offer is based on developing the individual and the organisation based on the four quadrant approach from Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory.

Contact us today; let Integral turn your organisational values into actions.