Values are the foundation of your personal brand and this is equally true for the culture and brand of any organisation.
Although not often mentioned or even really properly understood, every person and every organisation is affected fundamentally by their values.
They are evidenced by the way you do things, and can range from working hard through being punctual to treating people fairly. They determine what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’
The new book by Nik Kinley and Prof Shlomo Ben-Hur ‘Leadership OS’ puts values under the heading of ‘Creating Clarity’ which together with ‘Building Trust’ and ‘Generating Momentum’ are the three cornerstones of any Leader’s Operating System.
In their example of Daniel Birnbaum, CEO of Soda Stream they say:
“Birnbaum did not order everyone to be more open, creative or risk taking. He behaved this way himself and the operating environment he created around him then encouraged other people to behave in the same way too. After a while, they adopted his way of working and eventually, these other people started influencing the behaviour of the people around them as well. And so it spread”
When you listen to conversations about work the recurring theme is about values, both good and bad, but mainly bad !
What does this do?
It affects how people work, if an organisation’s values are at odds with their own. People are less trusting of their organisation and will not use their discretionary effort to think beyond what they have been told to do, so momentum slows down.
Hopefully you can see why we at Future Resume have included Values in our answer to the outdated CV. We actually help individuals in their work to clarify their own values and also help them to talk about them in relation to those stories they have also identified which are meaningful in their lives, and show how they operate at their best.
This way hiring managers can truly get a three-dimensional picture of a candidate, and, if they are clear about their organisations own values be able to see those who might not yet have all the skills required for a role but do have the ‘fit’.
I thought I would end with a few quotes:
“Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization’s makeup and success — along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like… I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organisation is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.”
Louis V Gerstner, Former CEO of IBM 1993-2002
“In determining the right people, the good-to-great companies placed greater weight on character attributes than on specific educational background, practical skills, specialized knowledge, or work experience.”
Jim Collins Business, consultant and author of Good to Great
“Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.”
Albert Einstein, Theoretical physicist