Clayton Christensen eloquently takes the conventional business idea of marginal thinking and applies it to personal decision-making, in this Harvard Business School piece. We may think that making a decision to cross our personal boundaries “just this once” might have a low/marginal cost, but when we begin to weigh the actual costs, we could end up bankrupt or down the rabbit hole of lies and deception. Christensen asks us to question our personal values and morals. That's what the devil and angel on our shoulders are for, right? How do you … [Read more...]
Values: A Part of the Everyday
Our personal values relate to decisions we make every day. Even the most mundane according to, Joel Urbany, author of How to Make Values Count in Everyday Decisions. We know, this got us all thinking about what it says about you when you leave your desk for that third cup of coffee or that you always eat out for lunch. Urbany dives into the term values-based decision making and draws a direct line between organizational values and those of individual employees, noting that this directly effects the overall decision making ability of an … [Read more...]
Constructive Conflict
Jeff DeGraff, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, expands on the Competing Values Framework, sharing how the creation of constructive conflict allows for internal innovation. How do you see constructive conflict in your own values? Do you see this between your personal values and that of your organization? Tell us in the comments section or at #ValuesNAS. … [Read more...]
A Return to The Competing Values Framework
The Competing Values Framework is one of the best tools that allows organizations to assess their internal culture. You can have each staff or team member share the current and preferred values of the organization, analyzing where “competing values” fall. This exercise gives employees buy-in and provides space for the sharing of organizational and personal core values. Check out our original post on the Competing Values Framework that appeared on Field Notes in December 2012. You can see what we learned by completing the exercise internally … [Read more...]
Do Your Values Actually Mean Something?
In this Harvard Business Review article, Patrick M. Lencioni discusses how constructing organizational core values is not a simple or meaningless task. We cannot and should not establish values because “we think we should” or “it’s the right thing to do.” They must be based on true meaning and upheld to the highest standard. Ensuring the core values of an organization resonate positively with employees is essential. Lencioni states that core values should be integrated with every employee-related process in the organization and that … [Read more...]
Values and What We Do
It’s pretty easy to identify the values of a cultural organization or initiative. Most mention them somewhere on their website, if not have an entire web section dedicated to this. We talk about values often, too. Inclusivity, equity, excellence are all frequently discussed at our conferences. Values are important to identify and certainly important to name, discuss and debate. It’s helpful for potential stakeholders to know what you stand for and for the world to know what we stand for, as a field. But I’m less interested in talking … [Read more...]