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“The actual company values, as opposed to the nice-sounding values, are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go.”
- Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility
Every time I walk into a new company I am advising, I invariably encounter a set of noble values that are prominently displayed on the walls. So the first thing I do is look past them by carefully observing how people really behave, which tells me what I actually need to know.
It’s not that most companies are disingenuous about the values they espouse. One of Enron’s “aspirational values” was integrity, which may have genuinely expressed who they wanted to be at the beginning. But over time, this did not reflect their “practiced values” of who they actually became when they committed fraud.
The gap between aspirational and practiced values is diagnostic of how much your company’s culture needs to improve. The actions you are taking to bridge the gap is prognostic of whether it will.
Via David Hain
