People
Issue No. 27 - February/March
Statement v real guts? It’s no contest
by Colin Pearce
“Ladieeees and gentle–mennnnn! Tonight we host the title fight of the ages between the two titans of the management-boxing ring.
“In the blue corner we have the featherweight champion from the 80s and 90s who looked so promising in all his “write-ups” but in two decades he showed he couldn’t punch his way out of a wet paper bag, weighing next to nothing and having achieved little, seen on countless corporate walls and many a Board report and website: Please welcome the Corporate Values Statement.
“In the red corner we have the heavyweight champion of the ages, undefeated in any contest to date, winner of every conflict, battle, championship, and biffo; hardly recognised by anyone in business, untrained and unrestrained from the board room to the factory floor, let’s hear it for Character of Your Individual Employees; CEO, managers, rank and file.”
Who’s your money on?
Mine’s on the big lump in the red corner. And I’m going to clean up. Everyone else’s money is on yesterday’s man in the blue corner.
Back to front
It’s no secret that I’m pretty cynical about the stated good intentions of organizations in general, but I’m particularly merciless with organizations that paste their values on the corporate walls.
For most of them it is an attempt to bluff the customers with a bit of PR or to look ‘non-HIH-ish’ to a wary stock market.
Worse, it is often a poorly disguised effort by management to compensate for bad hiring decisions.
I’ve had leaders ask me to help them work out their values so they can get employees to toe the party line.
The exercise is always conducted back to front. You have to start by understanding character.
You have to follow that by spelling out what character is. You have to define which character qualities you want to be measured. Then you have to hire according to character.
You ...
