Values as performance measures
Most forward-thinking businesses today strive to be values-driven. They invest time in developing values, spend energy trying to live them and endeavor to align culture around them.
Yet all too often leaders stop short of taking the next step - using them to drive performance. They are never translated into something measurable, people’s willingness and ability to live by them is never quantified.
So what prevents most organizations from truly having performance driven by their values? What I see, in most cases, is an expectation that when values exist, people will natural align their behavior around them. There is a belief that the existence of values is enough, and a lack of awareness that the vital next step is to bring them alive, make them useful and usable.
Why should you start measuring values?
So how does measuring values bring them alive and make them truly powerful?
When done well, values should help teams work together in ways that make them successful. They should inform the behaviors that drive outcomes.
If this is true, measuring values means measuring the lead measures, not the lag; identifying and focusing on the source, not the outcome.
Measuring values positively reinforces the behaviors that drive change (assuming your values support your vision of growth - in the Within world our values are the things that drive impact, joy and profitability - our vision of growth)
And finally, measuring values forces everyone to translate values into tangible behaviors, and shifts them from being big, all encompassing concepts to discrete behaviors.
What happens when you don’t start measuring values?
Too often, companies haven’t taken the first step of ensuring any value is translated to tangible behaviors. Values like ‘integrity’ show up and they are too big, or too generic to be helpful. Everyone has a different version of what it means to act with integrity - for me it might be coming to a meeting on time. For you it might be taking care of the person right in front of you, making you late to the same meeting. So we both feel like we are living the company values - acting with integrity, and yet simultaneously feel like other people aren’t living the values. Without taking a value and translating it into meaningful behaviors for your specific organization, values aren’t particularly helpful.
And for those companies who have taken this next step - translated a value into a meaningful expression of what showing up to that value means and doesn’t mean, they either simply don’t know how to measure something that is hard to put a number to, or still hang on to the belief we should be measuring the what, not the how.
Yet if we are not measuring our values:
How can we see people’s commitment to living them?
How can we build belief in them as a tool to drive growth?
How do we know which levers to pull to drive the performance that is going to allow us to fulfill our vision of the future?
Steps in measuring values
In our work with future focused companies working with a more infinite business mindset, we help them articulate how individuals and teams can show up to values and building systems to measure this. The first step is to ensure their values are guided by examples of what living that value looks like, and doesn’t look like.
For example – a Canadian creative agency we work is driven by the purpose: “Unleash progressive movements”. One of the values they believe will allow them to do that is “Imagine Better”.
They understand that to mean:
Redefining what’s possible
Challenging that which holds us back, and
Inspiring more in themselves and others
They also understand it does NOT mean:
Valuing innovation over effectiveness
Bullying people into change
Disregarding experience
We then build a shared understanding of what 'low – expected – high' performance is for each of the behaviors encompassed within the value. Suggesting we all perform at a high level 100% of the time doesn’t set anyone up well, but understanding the range of behavior helps us to give more quality feedback.
Values become really powerful and transformative when everyone on the team collectively builds an understanding of what is expected and starts striving to have living that value be a strength. This only happens when the values become the lens through which we view performance and are built into any review process.
Quantifying values also strengthens recruitment processes and allows people to more objectively hire for culture fit.
Isn’t it time you supported your people to grow the company they love by aligning everything you do to what will drive your company’s vision of growth?
We’d love to help you do just that.
