This Is Not An Article About Corporate Values
What a pity, corporate values are so trendy! If you don’t have a strong corporate values framework, you may not meet all the expectations as a boss, your company may be too old-fashioned and your team may feel unhappy. In a company that doesn’t rely on any values but profits, you can feel it, touch it, smell it, hear it. This is neither good nor bad. You simply entered a golden prison, and you would better know it. If a company displays too many corporate values, you might feel skeptical. Too many corporate values, too far from the reality, and the dream collapses.
If your corporate values are beautiful and honest, if your employees are happy and efficient, and if you have always enjoyed swollen profits, then congrats! You can stop reading this article and maybe give me your magic recipe.
Or you may be struggling with this right now. You could be either a founder or an executive looking for advices on how to build the perfect corporate values for your company.
What’s behind corporate values? Are they useful? Are they a factor for alienation or emancipation? Let’s find out.
1. The relation between corporate values and alienation is not that obvious at first sight.
I’ve never been very comfortable with corporate values. Are “the” values or “their” values also my values? Why would these values be right, fair, inspirational or better than others? Wouldn’t the overexposure to values be akin to fostering sheep-like behaviour? Here I must confess that I’m the victim of a cognitive bias since the worst insult I’ve been taught as a child was “mouton de Panurge” (“like sheep” in English).
Then I had the occasion to watch a video from Danièle Linhart (1), a sociologist of work researcher at CNRS laboratory. She used just the right words to express my feeling. Here is a very brief overview of her speech.
Once upon a time, Frederick Winslow Taylor’s idea was to use science as a universal organisational value in the factories. In 1911, “The Principles of Scientific Management” were based on science, meaning Truth. Therefore there were a very good solution or supreme value in order for the bosses and workers interests to be aligned. Translation: science, organisation and progress to make the workers stop dawdling.
The vision of Henry Ford, called Welfare Capitalism, was more comprehensive but equally ideological. When he introduced his $5-a-day pay rate in 1914 (when most workers made $11 a week), his goal was to reduce turnover and build a long-term loyal labor force that would have higher productivity. You might ignore that only married workers earned their $5-a-day pay rate. For singles the pay was only $3-a day. Of course! Married people slept well, ate well, didn’t drink in the bars every night, and then were more efficient at work. We’ll come back to Ford later on, but keep in mind that this kind of values looked like a real blue-collar religion.
Let’s land in 1968 in Europe. Students, youngs, workers were too strong and dangerous together, as social bodies. It would have been much easier to deal with a fragmented social body. From this time, managerial practices have become more and more individualized.
As of today, you all know these kind of self-centered values: surpass yourself, get out of your comfort zone, be the master of soft-skills, also be happy, be flexible, be bold. What a wonderful set of not so professional values. In a nutshell, work hard, be perfect in your daily work, in your brain, in your heart, in your social behaviour, but no pressure guys!
The real dilemma is to find the limit between professional and personal values. It is a complex exercise because of the hint of subjectivity that takes place in the meaning of each value. Different managers, countries, experiences… One of the most obvious example may be the working time issue. French style presenteeism or Dutch work-life balance? Eventually each employee has to navigate and “test and learn” whereas companies can use individual values as perfect decision levers when recruiting, dismissing or promoting someone.
Be cool, come as you are. If you don’t know what that means, the company does! However the dictatorship of the hype and coolness may not last forever because “Être dans le vent: une ambition de feuille morte” (2).
How does-it work in the startup land? Corporate values are often part of the picture from the very beginning of the journey. I promised you earlier that we would come back to Ford. Do you remember all this paternalistic and ideological scheme? Did you know that Ford was a very healthy vegetarian who sent inspectors at workers houses to check their life conditions, including their diet? Whoever doesn’t think about fruit baskets and yoga classes, raise his hand!
For those who prefer to see the glass as half full, corporates values in startups can also bring real enthusiasm and support the original vision and passion.This grace period may be powerfully natural when the team is still small and young, but what about the scale-up period? How does the company deal with the new entrants, particularly those “30 years old senior-middle-managers” (true story), meaning those experienced people that can’t be attracted and feeded with corporate values only?
You’re right, I might be a bit cynical. Let’s assume that you’re not the kind of boss who wants to raise his employees as children or over-control them. You’re just embedded in a professional story that you want to share. You just want that everybody in the team works towards the same goal, is committed and productive.
I’ve heard sometimes that corporate values may serve as a compass when tough decisions needed to be taken. Very inspirational! So, how do we create, use, knead and digest corporate values so that they become one of the best ingredients of the recipe?
2. Cooperation may be the magic ingredient in the potion.
Christophe Dejours, the father of work psychodynamic, has oriented his research for many years on suffering at work. He described, notably in his book Le Choix (3), how cooperation may help organisations turn from illness to full health. His approach is really pragmatic because, beyond theory, he focused also on finding new solutions and even proving that they operated.
The road from alienation to emancipation involves two steps.
On the one hand, at the individual level, the goal is to reintroduce intelligence at the very heart of work, in order to provide some counterweight to the various processes. This suggests that the employee is a professional, an adult, qualified and free.
On the other hand, at the collective level, the researcher proposes to foster cooperation. Cooperation leads to collective intelligence but it does not just pop up. It is not an innate ability but it is built up step by step, thanks to deliberative intelligence, voluntarily. This is a joint effort, a common ownership. In order to create this collectively built cooperation, a company needs to create space for discussion, free speech, listening and trust. The collective body sets the terms of cooperation bottom-up, transversely and the executive directors should obviously be part of it.
We could try to extend the fertile ground of cooperation to the factory of corporate values.
Why don’t we design corporate values according to the process described by Christophe Dejours to foster cooperation? It means designing values voluntarily, collectively, in a special trusted space. It worth trying it.
Or should we simply come back to basics!
It means living in cooperation instead of imposing corporate values artificially. Then, values, cooperation and common sense will simply be aligned and consistent. In my opinion they are only two essentials that really matter in this context: respect and action.
Respect for employees, customers, people’s personal and professional time, people’s work.
Respect meaning responsibility. When I do something, I do it well. My work has an influence on the whole team and the reputation of the company.
Respect implies relationships between adults.
Respect of the balance between contribution and reward, in terms of both gratitude and financial compensation.
And action, meaning to walk the talk. You may read the article written by Michel Albouy, finance teacher at Grenoble Ecole de Management, inspired by a conversation with his students about governance and management. He explains why exemplarity and consistency are even more pragmatic at work than speeches, or worst, double talk.
Speaking of corporate values: less is more.
If you care about having corporate values, be aware that they are not everything. Having too many corporate values is dubious, even dangerous if the whole working structure is empty, meaningless and not consistent.
Enforcing values without weighing the meaning and intelligence of work is worthless.
Enforcing values and culture without having established a strong strategy, a readable and efficient governance is worthless too. We could quote Christophe Dejours (5) who explains that: “In setting status, roles, areas of expertise, authority, responsibilities — of each person — work organization gives a framework in the absence of which any cooperation would be possible. The indirect contribution of work organization in cooperation is essential in this regard”.
As a conclusion, one may assume, like Jason Fried (6) did, that artificial cultures are “obvious, ugly, and plastic”. Still, we must not throw the corporate values out with the bathwater! Let’s work in cooperation instead of working under the yoke of values.
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(1) Danièle Linhart, La Comédie humaine du travail, de la déshumanisation taylorienne à la sur-humanisation managériale, Toulouse, éditions Erès, 2015 video here
(2) Gustave Thibon.
(3) Christophe Dejours, Le Choix — Souffrir au travail n’est pas une fatalité, Bayard éditions, 2015
(4) Michel Albouy, Le Management Bienveillant : c’est ceux qui en parlent le plus qui en font le moins, December, 15th 2017.
(5) Christophe Dejours, Coopération et construction de l’identité en situation de travail
(6) Jason Fried, You don’t create a culture, May, 13d 2008
