There is an interesting article
by Lucy Kellaway in the Business Life section of the Financial Times
on Monday 5th October.
She is sceptical of the merits of
companies having statements of corporate values. She found through some
‘quick and dirty’ research (ie asking a group of managers to identify the
values of their own companies) that most managers were not familiar with the
values of their own company.
Integrity is an often quoted
value but fails to pass the key test of ‘which company would say that integrity
is not a value of the business'. If values of one company could, just as
easily, be the values of another are they adding much?
She feels that values don’t
achieve anything for three reasons:
- Self description is
‘always dodgy’.
- Values make all companies look
the same.
- Public statements of value
are a hostage to fortune, as in the case of Volkswagen who have
‘sustainability’ as a value.
Interestingly seventeen of the
UK’s top 100 companies do not disclose any values on their website. Over
the past 10 years this group has outperformed the others in the FTSE100 by
about 70%.
This piece made me think.
Many of our clients have statements of corporate values and we are often
encouraged to refer to them when designing and running learning
programmes.
Do you
think corporate values are worthwhile, or do you agree with Lucy Kellaway?
Chris Goodwin
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