Milan: [00:00:00] Another new episode of Card Guest and what was it we talked about today? J.
Ged: So we talked about the value of values and the conversation went from eye rolls that you sometimes get when you mention values in an organization. And you know what? Characterizes a value and what should be present in an organization that demonstrates that they’re living their values. So I think the, the value of values is underestimated by a lot of organizations, but it’s a very, very powerful concept. And to, to paraphrase what John Stewart said, if you don’t live your values when they’re being tested, they’re not values, they’re hobbies. I actually think that’s not strong enough. I think. You if a value is not being lived, then they’re platitudes, not just hobbies. They’re platitudes, they’re just words on a wall.
They’re not being lived.
Milan: And I, you know, I, I totally get what he’s trying to say, and that’s why I’ve put, I’ve put it in there. But I think [00:01:00] it’s important. It’s the value of a value is in how is it being lived, not how is it being perceived? And the eye roll comes from values that are being created. As a veneer of how the organization wants to be perceived internally and externally, and is a conflict with how it actually lives of it goes.
Anyway, here is the episode.
Ged: I’m back here with Milan Viveka for the latest episode in our podcast series. So let’s spin the cards and see what we are gonna be talking about today.
Milan: I think that the correct word is shuffle, but who knows? But hey, we’re getting another heart. And as I mentioned few things. I love the hearts. One, value of values. What is the first thing you see when you start talking about values?
Ged: So a pretty [00:02:00] common reaction I get in organizations when it’s clear there are no real values is the eye rolls. You know, you mentioned values and you know, you’re looking up at the wall and maybe they’ve got integrity, honesty, and trust up as a poster up on the wall. And you mentioned values and the eyes just roll back into their heads and you know, I, here we go. And it’s, it’s a real indicator. That A, you can make a big impact to this business. And, but b, you’ve got some work to do to get them across the line because values are an intrinsic part of a great organization. And if they haven’t got any real understanding of what the values are and what the value of values is then there’s a bit of, bit of work to do.
They get it almost invariably, and I don’t think I’ve ever worked with a business that haven’t eventually made the transition into, right. We now understand [00:03:00] why this is important. These are not just platitudes. They’re not three words up on a poster or up on a wall.
Milan: That’s so tough.
Ged: But it does take time. It does take time, and sometimes you need to change some of the team.
Sometimes you need to change all of the team because when you actually come down to it and when you’ve actually discovered what the organization’s true values are, they’re just not line lined up with them. They just don’t see the value of those values.
Milan: You know, I, I work globally as you do, and I just love the different perception of this concept in different cultures, Because when people around the world, here it is, the eye roll gets an extra dimension because there is just so much. About values, which is completely fake and people are not stupid. They get that. And it, it is the only way, that they, the only context [00:04:00] in which they ever heard about values. Yes, we have some work to do to to make that work. The funny thing is that every organization has values. Every organization has guiding principles. Just might not
Ged: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Milan: Might not be understood, but you know what? They’re followed. And if they’re not, if they’re not the right ones, right, if they’re created by habits and not deliberately, you. Very often get behaviors that you don’t want, and then eventually you get a regression to a mean and the culture suffers. People say a lot that, you know, when you have values and, and people are really living them and presenting them that it’s like a cult. Recently I heard that a cult is the first four letters in culture. That’s all it is, right? That if it doesn’t look like a cult from outside, it’s probably not very strong as a culture. And I believe in that. I actually
Ged: That’s right.
Milan: That.
Ged: Yep. Yep. And I, I think. [00:05:00] There’s a misconception that you set values, you know, you do not set values, you discover them because they are already alive in the organization. So, you know, our role as a coach when we start working with a leadership team is to help them uncover what those values are.
So we are mining, we’re going deep into the organization to try and understand what those values are. But they’re there. They’re there already. They might not be the values that the CEO and the leadership team want, but that’s tough. They’re already there. And I’ve seen numerous CEOs who go into an organization and say, you know, we need to change the culture of the organization.
And you, these are the values I want to, I want to, to, to be present in the organization. And I take a step back and think, good luck with that. Because generally two things happen. The organization. Changes, which takes a long time. Or secondly, [00:06:00] the CEO changes as in changes his job because they spend two years trying to change the values and they don’t.
Yeah, because it’s almost impossible to change the, the values, the culture of an organization.
Milan: Again, values and culture are not too different. Not the same things, right? I think that.
Ged: They’re very connected. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Milan: Our foundation of the culture. But you know, when you say, and I think that there is a lot of misunderstanding of that. When you say changing culture, culture doesn’t change, culture evolve. Right? You can also be in an organization when there are several subcultures, which is really, sometimes you are in the situation where the perception of the culture is so blinded by what we want it to be, that we don’t actually see it, of what it is. Right? And those are the things where. The value of values is that once you define them, put them in the front, you discuss them, you talk about it, to the point of as we were talking in [00:07:00] repetition you know that people are start chuckling and saying, okay, we get it now. Where you are getting somewhere, because then you can actually leverage the value of values saying, okay, we hire,
Ged: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Milan: Evaluate ourselves. That, lift them
Ged: Yep.
Milan: Them to others. So when somebody comes, you don’t even have to say that because it’s obvious. And as we were talking just recently I don’t remember which chart it was though about how difficult it is to test for values.
Right? Even more difficult if you don’t have them clear, right?
Ged: Indeed. Yeah. And, and so we have this sort of, now this paradox where, you know, maybe there are people in the organization that don’t feel that they are a fit, or the team don’t feel they’re a fit. And often once you bring the values to life, they suddenly have something to latch onto. They have something to connect, and they can say, yeah, [00:08:00] yeah, okay, I get that.
Yeah, that’s, that’s something I can stand for. You know, so that people that were maybe not high performers, that were not really aligned to the values, suddenly they start swinging behind and they start saying, okay. I’ve got clarity now. Oh yeah. That, that’s, that’s good. I’m, I’m happy to, to work and live in the company in that way.
So we see some very, very strange transitions and some unusual transitions once the culture, once the values of an organization have been discovered and communicated, and communicated and over communicated
Milan: Do you get No.
Ged: Oh, many times.
Milan: Me ask you a specific question. How many times did you
Ged: Sure. Sure.
Milan: When you did the first assessment with the leadership team and the leadership team would be, you know, working about their team and they said, this person is C, this person is C. Then you eventually find out that the person doing the assessment is actually the C in the question, and then suddenly with just the change of leadership. Those [00:09:00] former Cs become A’s and they just blossom and bloom and, and grow. Right,
Ged: Yep.
Milan: Very often is that if the, if the culture in the organization is not consistent, you can have these pockets where actually you have the right person who came in based on their understanding of the values, but then their leadership or somebody who’s between them and the heart of the organization is. Shooting them from it and, and keeping them, keeping them in the box. I’ve seen this so many times. It’s always unpleasant and then revealing. And, you know, we were talking about this in when we were talking about debt weights in the, in the A Players episode. How by removing the debt weights. How you can elevate the rest of the team and how immediate and palpable that result of that is. And it’s all comes ultimately down to values.
Ged: Yeah, you’re, you’re setting them free.
Milan: Absolutely.
Ged: Yeah. So, [00:10:00] so I, I often get the question from CEOs, you know, and don’t wanna go too much into repetition, but you know, you know, we’ve, okay, now we’ve discovered the values, you know, how do we actually get people to, you know, to, to understand them? I said, well, you know, you, you need to talk about them.
How often do we need to talk about them every day? I mean, what situations. Every situation. You know, is it a meeting? Is it a, you know, a hiring discussion? Is it a feedback conversation? You know, is it you know, any way that you can get the values out in day-to-day conversations, you should take advantage of that, and you should encourage the, your teams to do that also, because that brings it to life.
And it also shines a light where behaviors are emerging that don’t align with that.
Milan: Got an idea for another card, which would be inspired by what you just said. And it’ll be the good news about the good news, which is because the good news that we say in the beginning of every meeting, and again, that’s another thing that [00:11:00] non A-players feel like is oppressive. Like, I don’t have any good news.
Well. We know what that means, right?
Ged: Yep. Mm-hmm.
Milan: Yeah,
Ged: Indeed.
Milan: The, besides it, you know, putting your brain on the right path for the rest of the thing, this is the best opportunity to celebrate because values and adherence to them or, or exhibiting them, needs to be celebrated, right? Because that is what is actually moving the forward.
Ged: Yep. Yeah. Yep. So, so what, what are the traits of values that, you know, people should look out for? Because, you know, you, you can, you can really spot when an, when a value emerges in a discovery, you know, what, what would you look, what would you say defines a value?
Milan: First of all, you need to have a clarity. Right. We have a we have this exercise I wish I remember which coach shared it with us. This is the beauty of the Metronomics community that, you know, we share IDS and, I, I wish I knew who that was. Sharing the [00:12:00] exercise where one of the ways of understanding the values is through behaviors, right? What is the behavior? How does a behavior adheres to this value look like, and how does a behavior that violates this value look like? Right. That needs to be clear. That needs to be clear to anybody in the organization. This is what it looks, and this is what it doesn’t. By the way, I also ran into a concept of values being worded as commandments in terms of you shall not, right?
So, which are basically the known negotiables, the things that we will not accept, right? The things that are just a logo in there.. I haven’t had it used or haven’t seen it used with any of my clients yet, but I think it can be a really, really powerful, right? Like these are the things that we are just not going to do and everything else is fair game.
Ged: Yep.
Milan: Which I
Ged: Yep.
Milan: Love the idea. Yeah.
Ged: The, you know, the, [00:13:00] we, we don’t tolerate brilliant jerks is a great example of that. You know, we’re not saying what we do, we’re saying what we don’t. Yeah. So a value, a value statement can be just as much you know, we, you know, the, the, the not as well as the, the, the, the, the yes.
Milan: I think that the Knot actually has a very, has a strength. Again, you know, I’m all about positivity and appreciative inquiry and you know, all of those things. So this concept is a little bit tough on me. However, I do see the power on it of setting, setting a clear line like this is just not going to fly.
Hmm.
Ged: Yep. So the, so the value has to be alive in the organization. There shouldn’t be too many now. Five is okay. Three is great. Any more? Any more than five, you know? Just test your team. They won’t remember them. You know, that will, they’ll become clear pretty, pretty quickly. And you know, when, when I work with an organization and they have sort of know 6, 7, 8 values, I say, okay, just put ’em in order of priority.
Put the [00:14:00] strongest one up top and the weakest one down the bottom. And when they’ve done that, I get them to draw a line under number five and say, ignore the others. Yeah.
Milan: That’s,
Ged: Yeah. Okay. We now have five.
Milan: But you know what what helps is doing the team team assessment, right? Because when you’re looking at the behaviors and people putting them, you know, into particular sections so that you know along the value Xes, the conversation could be, which one is the value that. It’s not being exhibited here. Why? And is that a problem? Or so are we lowering the bar or are we keeping it or are we saying, you know, this value is actually no. That And very often, you know, if you have seven, the two of them are probably somewhere hidden in the other five already. They just, for some reason they are pulled out.
Yeah.
Ged: Indeed. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. So other, other characteristics of of values. What else would you say?
Milan: Are there true meaning that, does the leadership actually believe in them themselves? Again, you were talking about the fake values, [00:15:00] which don’t have any volume. If anything, they just make you look like a fool. Right? I did have an experience where CEO use the language with me was literally a opposite of their number one value. And so you have to do this sometimes where the actual value set, you’ll never do this. Know, it’s like what? Yeah,
Ged: Me understand. Yes. Hmm hmm.
Milan: It,
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: It has to be true. It has to come from heart. It has to be something that the. Leader, the leadership itself can be absolutely 100% behind. Obviously, if they’re not, they’re not the A team you know, a player leadership team and you know, we have a different problem, but that is what set up
Ged: Indeed.
Milan: For the rest of the organization.
Ged: Yeah, so they’ve gotta be true. They’ve gotta be alive. You [00:16:00] should be prepared to make a firing decision if someone consistently fails to live the values. Setting them free, liberating them and. You. Another definition I, I often use is you should be prepared to say no to a client if something they asked you to do violated one of the values and saying no also means not choosing not to work with a client if the behaviors would contrave your, your values.
So you are saying no to revenue. You are saying no to revenue now in support of your values.
Milan: Funnily enough, I had a conversation with a client of mine two days ago, and he, he had this discussion and said, look, you know, I’ve been presented with this contract a client that. Has a clause in there that first for whatever reason, is actually not the right [00:17:00] thing by the client.
I am, I know what is it that they’re trying to solve, but this is the wrong way of doing it. And ultimately it’s actually against our values because it’s putting the client into a position where we don’t want our client to end up. So I cannot sign this. And I was like, you know.
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: To you, right?
Because if
Ged: Yep. Yep.
Milan: Again, because if you would go with that, then you are creating a cognitive dissonance of saying, okay, you know, this is the value, but Right. And that is just not acceptable. You are losing value in the values.
Ged: Yep. Yeah, and that that can probably be resolved with a short conversation with the client and an explanation of why they’re not able to sign it.
Milan: And, and being creative about, you know, what is the concern or the desire of the client and how can that be resolved without the values of the of the client here.
Ged: Yep. Yep, yep. So the [00:18:00] value of values. So if you get the eye rolls that I mentioned right at the beginning of this this episode, you’ve probably either got the wrong values or you’ve got the wrong people.
