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    Vital Tenets: Shaping Organizational Values and Culture
    Vital Tenets: Shaping Organizational Values and Culture
    Vital Tenets: Shaping Organizational Values and Culture
    Ebook160 pages1 hour

    Vital Tenets: Shaping Organizational Values and Culture

    By David Nolan

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    About this ebook

    This book makes a great case for why values-based and leadership-driven companies succeed. With real life examples we can all relate to, Mr. Nolan identifies the negative trends that undermine organizations while giving a practical, step based approach to counter them.

    Paul Raymond, P.Eng, ICD.D CEO, Alithya Group

    In a time of an evolving global marketplace, numerous business mergers, a technology revolution, and a rapidly changing society, Mr. Nolan has discovered an often invisible, but extremely important, power source. Organizational culture will undoubtedly be a major factor in the success or failure of business looking ahead. Rev Dr. William C. Hill, Pastor, teacher, and author specializing in religion, leadership and organizational development

    Daves innovative approach and insights takes widely accepted ideas and explains how good companies can become great companies if they embrace his Vital Tenets.

    Kevin B. Harrington, Jr. Recognized as a top relationship sales executive selling over a half billion dollars of IT solutions during the past 20 years.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWestBow Press
    Release dateFeb 6, 2015
    ISBN9781490868042
    Vital Tenets: Shaping Organizational Values and Culture

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      Book preview

      Vital Tenets - David Nolan

      cover.jpg

      Copyright © 2015 David Joseph Nolan, Jr.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      WestBow Press

      A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.westbowpress.com

      1 (866) 928-1240

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      ISBN: 978-1-4908-6805-9 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4908-6806-6 (hc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4908-6804-2 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2015901382

      WestBow Press rev. date: 02/06/2015

      CONTENTS

      Introduction

      Charting A Better Course

      1)   The Values And Culture Challenge

      The Tail Wagging The Dog

      The Leadership Charge

      Organizational Alignment

      Key Questions

      2)   Cultural Influences

      The Individual And The Organization

      Cultural Baggage

      Coarse Culture

      Organizational Symptoms

      The Disconnected Organization

      3)   Turning The Tide

      Operating Assumptions

      Values In Action

      A Discussion Of Values

      Professionalism And Discretion

      Loose Cannons

      Service And Efficiency

      Dependability

      Helpfulness And Accountability

      The Flexibility Rule

      Commitment And Loyalty

      Loyalty And Lay-Offs

      Communication And Knowledge-Sharing

      Understanding

      4)   Telling The Story

      Finding Your Organization’s Values

      Setting The Tone Of The Organization

      Vital Tenets Model

      Results

      5)   Organizational Vignettes

      6)   Conclusion

      Acknowledgements

      Tenet

      Any opinion, principle, doctrine, dogma etc., especially held as true by members of a profession, group or movement. he holds (Latin) Dictionary.com

      INTRODUCTION

      Charting a better course

      Leaders tend to focus on organizational values and culture at several key times in the life of an organization:

      • When forming or re-forming an organization

      • When in a crisis or emerging from a crisis

      • When they are asking organization members to aspire to new challenges

      These are specific situations when leaders need the targeted investment and commitment of all the organization’s members. The organization may be in a threatened or humbled state. It’s not business as usual. In fact it’s business unusual because what worked in the past is no longer working or has been somehow compromised. The organization is either new and unproven or trying to recapture their earlier success in an environment that has changed. The messages have a similar ring to them:

      We need to get this enterprise off the ground.

      We need to grow this business and double our size.

      We need to set a new and better course to survive and avoid pitfalls.

      We need to get back to our founding principles.

      Do they look to tools, technology and processes? Yes, but that approach is a given. It is in fact hard to measure when organizations don’t have a focus on tools, technology and processes. That always seems to be the reaction to a challenge. But it may not always produce the desired results.

      It is at these challenging times that many leaders realize that they need to get all of the organization members on the same track, rowing in the same direction. Thinking beyond tools, technology and processes leads to something more foundational: organizational culture and values. The why are we doing this question needs to be asked and answered.

      Addressing culture and values requires sacrifices and a commitment to change by everyone in the organization. You will be introducing new challenges and asking individuals to buy in to a philosophy that gives the work of the organization a real purpose and meaning. Each individual will have a role in bringing this organizational transformation to fruition.

      This book provides a foundation for that transformation.

      THE VALUES AND CULTURE CHALLENGE

      We do not need more intellectual power, we need more moral power. We do not need more knowledge, we need more character. We do not need more government, we need more culture. We do not need more law, we need more religion. We do not need more the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are not seen.

      Calvin Coolidge

      Life is made up of interactions. The nature, substance, and results of those interactions, whether positive or negative, fruitful or destructive, will be primarily influenced by our values, culture and character. All of these have been developed over time and influenced by our upbringing, family, schools and environment.

      These values are the tools we have for interacting, successfully or not, with the wider world. The influencing entities: namely our family, school, workplace and social groups, have the power to form, develop and mold those values. The most powerful or the one with the first bite at the values apple is the family. This is the group with the most potential to embed values in individuals that will endure throughout their lifetimes.

      Good, solid values will benefit the individual in school and organizational life where they overlap with and reinforce sound organizational values embedded in these environments. Poor individual values will compete and potentially conflict with the organization’s values. There may be values that are instilled in individuals at the family development stage that work perfectly fine in the family and neighborhood environments but lead to conflict in the wider academic or work world. Similarly there may be values that are instilled in individuals at the primary or secondary education levels that work perfectly fine in those environments but are an impediment to progress in work organizations. Finally there are values from the wider society that have a profound influence on young people and imprint them with a mindset that, carried into the workplace, will result in a significant cultural disconnect.

      The challenge this book is addressing is the potential conflict between values instilled by family, schools and the culture that, fully realized in an organization setting, (usually under trying or character-revealing conditions) run counter to the organization’s values and culture and ultimately undermine the goals of the organization. When this happens the mission of the organization is potentially compromised and threatened.

      The Values and Culture Challenge

      The problem with organizational values and culture are that they are often assumed. They are assumed to exist, assumed to be clearly defined, assumed to be widely understood, and assumed to be accepted by most within the organizations. These are false and risky assumptions.

      Even in an organization that purports to advance a set of core values a survey of organization members may reveal the reality of widespread ignorance of these values. Even if they are known and recited it’s important to discern if they are understood in the context of the organization’s objectives. Values segregated from the real work and challenges of the organization are just nice words that have no meaning or impact. Finally all of this is of no value if these values, these Vital Tenets, are not applied by the organizations members in their daily work in the organizational setting. To reach that goal the values need to be embedded in each individual. They need to own the values and have real world experience with applying them to address organizational challenges on a daily basis.

      Setting an enterprise-wide organizational objective of a fully embedded and actively growing set of organizational values may seem like a tall order. It appears to be asking a lot especially today in an increasingly cynical era. If done diligently, however, a properly mission-aligned set of values, applied consistently, and with a long-term commitment, will produce results. Meeting this lofty organizational objective will show itself to be a worthwhile investment that pays great benefits to the organization and the individual. It won’t matter what technology or processes are used to make the organization more efficient or productive. These can be changed to address deficiencies. Values and culture make the technology and processes work better by providing a shared philosophy and approach to business challenges. Everyone will be rowing in the same direction.

      Ultimately it will be the organization’s values that make the difference in a market with many competitors. All other things being equal, those organizations with a positive values and culture program in place for new and veteran employees will have an edge. Those organizations that allow negative cultures to spread will see quality diminish and professionalism wane.

      The Tail Wagging the Dog

      In the end organizational goals and objectives are accomplished by the people in the organization. Therefore the question each organization needs to ask is:

      Who are these people and what are their values?

      Organizations focus and rely on skills and processes to achieve their goals. The question the

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