Rol Fessenden responded -
> People have expressed concern with what consequences may flow from
> acceptance of the notion of some -- even one, perhaps -- universal value.
>
...snip...
>
> Let's be clear that postulating or even proving the existence of universal
> values does not lead necessarily, inexorably, or even with likelihood to
> any specific set of outcomes. To say that "Well-meaning religious folks"
> have done what they did based on their own need to promulgate their own
> values is not the same as saying that their bahavior was a necessary or
> sufficient outcome of that belief. We are all too smart to buy that.
I would like to bring this discussion closer to LO and leave behing
the issue of inculcating children or spreading religion to savages.
LO is all about companies and communities, all about "destroying the
illusion that the world is created of separate, unrelated forces" and
"organizations where people continually expand their capacity to
create the results they truly desire, ---- where collective
aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how
to learn together." - quotes from page 3 of "The Fifth Discipline".
I'll leave community to others, but within companies I believe that
values can be a powerful unifying force, perhaps the only one able to
survive all the vicissitudes of time. After all, values are the sole
elements by which everyone decides what is good and what is bad.
By this, I do not mean forcing values down the throats of employees.
I mean bosses who live by high standards of those values respected by
the vast majority of employees and bosses who openly subject the
companies policies, procedures, goals and support for employees to
value judgments by all employees in an ongoing, open dialogue. This
is the basic process of providing outstanding leadership.
We use 23 values as more important than most, but never reject or
demean the attempts by others to inject other values into the
process. In over 20 years of experience using this process, we have
not found any case wherein disagreement over the existence of a value
had any effect on the outcome of the dialogue. Many people do not
think a particular value to be as important as others, but any
objection disappears if all values are reasonably satisfied. Openly
meeting high standards for values is a sure way to create the level
of trust so necessary to effective cooperation, teamwork and
collaboration among employees, so necessary to an LO.
The point is that whether or not values are universal or held by
every last person on earth is irrelevant in a work environment.
Values are the only effective guidelines which are common to enough
people to form the basis for trust and collaboration. They are
effective because everyone will be able to strongly get behind any
effort which meets their values. The key for the boss is to
simultaneously meet high standards for all values if possible and if
not, to meet as many as possible without totally violating any. I
would contend that meeting high standards for all is possible with
lots of effort and patience, but that may be irrelevant because there
may not be an alternative for trust, teamwork and collaboration?
Any alternatives, comments or questions out there??
Regards, Joan
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joan Pomo The Finest Tools for Managing People
Simonton Associates Based on the book
jpomo@gate.net "How to Unleash the Power of People"
--"jpomo@gate.net" <jpomo@gate.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>