Do Your Organizational Values Have Legs?

I love it when organizations have clearly defined values. I love it even more when you see those values exemplified in practice. However, the opposite also occurs!

A friend recently told me about a less-than-positive experience during her new employee orientation. She works as a nurse and was hired by a well-regarded hospital. Their orientation blended new staff from every department and role. In this particular orientation, there was a new cohort of medical doctor interns. At the catered lunch, my friend took a lunch box from one of the two tables in the room. As she took the lunch, she was told that these lunches were only for the interns and that she needed to take her lunch from the other table. Attendees observed that the interns received a higher quality lunch and a clear hierarchy was silently established.

For an organization touting the values of respect, integrity and professionalism, there was a gap between what was stated and what was practiced. Shane Atchison purports that organizations which post their company values all over their walls have serious culture problems. In other words, a company’s values need to be lived, not talked about. While it is easy to point a finger, there are few of us who have not done the same thing over our lives.

Which value is the most difficult to practice in your organization? Where do you have opportunity to tighten the gap between what you preach and what you practice? If you don’t know, I’ll bet your employees do!