Jim Dawson asked:
> I've recently begun an effort to create a company wide (60+people)
> discussion on what are our core values and principles, and which ones do
> we want to take into the 21st century? Like most places most people have
> their noses to the grindstones and aren't likely to get too involved. Any
> suggestions for enrolling people in this effort?
We went through a similar effort, starting in the beginning of 1996, in a
department of 100 people. Our process started with a 2-day off-site
discussion with the group's leaders (both formal and less formal). We came
back from there with an incomplete (way too long) list of principles and
values. We the organized a series of workshops with everyone else (led by
the participants from the first workshop) to narrow down on the ideas. We
had to devote a lot of time in preparing a workshop that was interesting
to our eyes and used free breakfast to help people make the decision to
attend. Officially, attendance was not mandatory, but strongly suggested.
Even after this, we were left with something we figured was incomplete.
Three months later, we organized training sessions on what we call
"performance leadership", mostly based on Aubrey Daniels' _Bringing Out
the Best in People_, where the consultant also introduced some of Argyris'
concepts, the left-hand column (we call it straight talk) and the
difference between espoused theory and theory-in-use (or the say-do gap) -
these two (straight talk and closing the gap) ended up making it as
values.
Here we are, 6 months after this effort. Some say we're empty handed, but
I don't believe so. My thoughts on our process are the following:
- Most people, at first, seem to understand what we're trying to do,
but don't really believe in the outcomes.
- As they think about values and principles, they slowly get to like
it, and I associate that with a feeling of togetherness that was not
present before.
- It is important, especially for values, that striking examples are
shown. In our case, RESPONSIBILITY was another one of the values. We
placed the word responsibility above a line and the words EXCUSES, BLAME,
DENIAL under that line with a slogan exhorting people to act "above the
line". People were using the slogan everytime they had a chance (it was
actually painful at times), but we can now see (or feel) a difference. A
meaning started to bloom...
Note: Maybe this stuff about responsibility, excuses, blame and denial was
taken somewhere else, I don't claim any copyright for it, for my
department or for me, and I hope I didn't infriged on any.
A conclusion I draw from what I just wrote is that time is an important
factor. The people need time to get to internalize concepts - the concept
behind having values and principles, and the concepts you might want to
adopt through the choice of these values.
Give them time, expect a slow start, work hard, keep explaining what you
do, this is my advice.
--Christian Giroux lmccgir@lmc.ericsson.se System Support Manager, Technical Assistance Center Ericsson Research Inc. Montreal
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