So you’ve got your values defined? Now do this…
It’s time to talk about behaviour. Specifically, behaviour that indicates the extent to which a team is living their values.
Why Values?
In our work with organisations of all kinds, sizes and stages of life-cycle, the one constant measure that we’ve found uniquely predicts the likelihood of a team reaching and maintaining a high-performance level is the response to a simple question. Does this team live their values?
Why behaviours?
When asked to define examples of team and or organisational culture, most of the time responses include framing along these lines — ‘when this happens’ or ‘they said this’ or ‘we do this because’. In the context of organisations, culture is action. Actions are behaviours. Behaviours in teams and organisations can include an observable interaction — an email, a Slack post, a spoken word, a physical interaction such as body language. Forgot the old adage ‘actions speak louder than words’ — in the world of work, a lot of the time words are actions. Much of the organisational tension we spend time disarming as Coaches emanates from words that are at cross-purposes with cultural values, either spoken or written.
Let’s bring these together…
Most organisations have understood for a long time the benefit of enshrining values into their cultures. Lists of words or phrases are developed that align with what the organisation’s leaders believe the organisation stands for. More and more of the time, employees at all levels are involved in shaping and defining these lists, as they should be. Sometimes, these lists make it as far as being included in informal ‘Charters’, very rarely are they included in employment contracts. What’s normal is that the list is drawn up, produced as a poster or stencil and glued or painted up on a wall somewhere. And that’s where the journey ends. You may have experienced this in your organisation.
Values in lists do nothing to create culture. Only when they are lived do they serve their purpose to provide both the moral foundation stones and fulcrum for action that they can and should be.Behaviour is the measure of abstract concepts such as values. Without acting according to your values — the verb that brings the adjective to life — values remain mere words.
This is why many values initiatives in organisations fail to deliver outcomes beyond the very short-term. Teams and whole organisations do the initial work to decide what their declared values are, they list them and usually define them. And that’s where they stay. As a list of words and definitions. They do not come to life. When values live as observable actions, the benefits of doing this initial listing work can be felt. Values can be experienced. Whether the list contains the right values can be tested. Their worth can be shown, measured and assessed.
Linking values and behaviours
The bridge we can build between the abstract list of words and behaviours that are observable is all about verbs. When we do ‘this’, are we living our values? When we do ‘that’, are we living are values to a greater or lesser degree?
Responding to questions such as these are the first steps in defining actions that define whether values are being lived. Or not. Actions can be clearly defined. Language can be clearly assessed. What we do can be seen. Values linked actions provide a framework for consistent behaviours that are ‘known’ to be aligned with values. Better still, you can define which actions are ok (in alignment with your values) and which actions are not ok (not in alignment with your values).
Chose your values with intention…
Let’s just return to that list of words for a moment. If by now I’ve begun to convince you of the benefit of linking values to behaviours, you may have returned to your own values list, or that of your team, and reviewed it considering how you might do this. Here’s where I’d suggest you start. Note how many of the words are verbs.
Most values lists are formed around nouns and adjectives. Which is fine, if you’d like them to remain as abstract constructs. Converting those words to verbs immediately brings them to life — now they are things you do. Kindness is a common value in purpose-driven organisations. Being kind, or always being kind, is a verb based interpretation of the same value. Always being kind is far easier to craft into a ‘what’s ok/not ok’ framework than kindness. Customer excellence is a value we come across increasingly often in for-profit organisations. Always providing customers with excellent outcomes is one example of a similar ‘verb conversion’. Always helping our customers to the fullest extent of our ability would be another.
Simon Sinek provides a good example of reforming values into verbs, so that they can more efficiently provide a measurable reference, see below;
Which values for your team depends on what they do…
If the team lives values of taking care, being kindness, being empathetic, thinking of others, helping each other over competing constantly, they have a much greater likelihood of being resilient to unforeseen disruption. ‘Ruthless compassion’
If teams live values such as being collaborative, supportively challenging, staying open to new ideas and always being inclusive, they are much more likely to be able to adapt efficiently and plan for anticipated change if their lived values support the intended culture. Values such as ‘always cooperating’, ‘sharing fearlessly’, ‘staying open to fresh ideas’ or ‘relentlessly exploring’ would be examples that would facilitate the desired culture in a collaborative team.
A process-driven team might thrive living values such as ‘being constantly diligent’, ‘collaboratively checking quality’, ‘loving progress more than speed’ or ‘considering all options before changing the plan’.
On of our favourite expressions when facilitating framework design sessions is “pay attention to your intention” — we like it so much this phrase is one of the designs on our facilitation shirts. When you’re setting values for your team, your intention is to design a framework of values that the aligned behaviours will nurture, support and promote the activities that drive the desired performance of your team. If you are designing values frameworks for whole organisations, you need to get right down to the core behaviours that you want to see demonstrated consistently by every team — and that they can then add their own layer of behaviours onto without compromising any of the core set.
KBIs are lead indicators…
KBIs are Key Behaviour Indicators. These are the measurement index for your values frameworks. They show the extent to which the behaviours measured contain more ‘what’s ok’, or more ‘what’s not ok’. Over time when compared to external influences, you can begin to interpret what pressures can lead to teams doubling down on, or compromising on, their values — and adjust accordingly! When compared to outcome measures, such as KPIs, vs budget figures, ROI, ROCE, engagement scores, retention rates etc — is that KBIs become lead indicators for all of these other measures. That’s right. All of them.
What we’ve seen over the years we’ve worked with hundreds of teams building these frameworks is that when teams have positive KBI score (more ‘what’s ok than not ok) they increase the likelihood of achieving or exceeding expectations on all other measures. The more positive the KBI score, the higher probability of reaching the desired organisational outcome.
This becomes a lead indicator because you see the behaviour immediately. With appropriate measurement intervals and appropriate escalation points, changes in KBI performance are visible long before you see a change in KPI scores or budget outcome. Variations can be met with enquiry and intervention where necessary, often with enough lead time to reverse the change-affect before the impact is seen in lag-measures. One CFO that we worked with compared KBIs to management accounts, and KPIs to financial accounts and quarterly reports. By the time you see the results in the later set, it’s too late to change the outcome. KBIs, just like management accounts and the predictive analysis they contain, give you time to adjust activity and affect the outcome.
Why else this works so well…
Values can be aligned with actions. Actions impact on feelings. Feelings drive performance. That’s why this works. It’s actually that simple. It’s not about making people happy, it’s about making them feel safe.
We know actions (including words) can be felt, and felt differently by different people at different times depending on context and perspective. Having a dependable framework for actions linked to values the whole team or organisation has helped shape, provides a consistent space for employees to show up in. To be themselves. To experiment when they need or want to, within defined boundaries. This framework promotes fairness. This framework advocates for inclusion. This framework stimulates vulnerability — as the edges of what’s ok and what’s not ok are clear to all. When we’re trying to build cultures that are high trust, high psychological safety and high in creativity and adaptability — we always start with values and KBIs. I hope after reading this, you will too.
If you’d like to discuss how we could help you develop a KBI framework to support the performance of your team or organisation, you can get in touch with Tim via the author button at the end of this article, or with any member of our team via the US page in the header of this site.
