How Do Values Drive Culture?

Your culture work will give you new insight, into how organisations tick. Above all, it will teach you to see your world in terms of ‘cause’ and ‘effect’. As a leader of a cultural journey, you will learn to operate on the balcony and the dance floor simultaneously to observe what is happening and see both the underlying value-set that is driving what is occurring and how others are interpreting this action.

To lead culture change, you will need to know how values actually work and how they play out through the behaviours, symbols and systems of your organisation.


What are Values?
When you work with culture, you need to be very clear on what is meant by the word ‘value’ because you will be using it a lot. Logically the word ‘value’ describes exactly what a value is. It is ‘what we value’. What is important to us? As a society, we value ‘integrity’ we are likely to take actions which benefit the larger whole. On a closer examination, these values contain an ingredient which puts the whole ahead of, or at least alongside, the good of the individual.

But here’s the tricky bit. Through our behaviour we show that we actually place value on a different set of attributes. We say we value honesty, but we also value being liked, and through our behaviour we hold back from telling the truth if we feel it will make us unpopular – thus the verb ‘value’, which ultimately guides our actions, and has come to mean ‘that which is important to us’.

It encompasses a much wider set of attributes than those normally described as ‘values’. This is not an argument in semantics. It lies at the heart of the challenge leader’s face in influencing culture. Culture is the manifestation of what is rarely valued. If an organisation values being nice to each other more than they value honesty, their culture will reflect this and it will play out, for example, in the way performance reviews are conducted, We can sit here and argue that honesty is a higher order value than being nice, but this is just talk. The walk shows that being nice is more important.

It is more useful to use the word ‘value’ to embrace a broader set of attributes than would normally be the case. This line of thinking results in two types of values, the first set will be familiar to you, they are more characteristics that enrich and benefit the whole and which most organisations would like to value.

Enriching Values include: Performance, Customer focus, Teamwork ,Integrity ,Honesty, Safety,
Innovation, Doing what we say we will, Environmental awareness, Developing our people,
Risk management, Pursuit of excellence, Service, Relationships, Growth, Balance

This list is inspiring in terms of its ambition. It describes our desire to set standards around what is and is not acceptable. It develops a framework for how we should behave. These values usually benefit others as well as us, and are thus enriching values.

To understand the whole picture however we have to create another list. Another set of things that we value, that are important to us. These are not talked about as values, and yet we do value them.

We call them Selfish Values, which include: Money, Status, Independence, Staying out of trouble, Avoiding conflict, Power, Winning over others, Looking good, Keeping everyone on side,
Popularity, Control, Being right.

The first list benefits me, but also others. The second benefits me but potentially at the expense of others. Your organisations desired values will undoubtedly be drawn from the first list. But to understand how your organisation ticks, you have to understand how both sets play out to create the culture that correctly drives behaviour in your organisation.

Many cultures demonstrate that the second list is more important than the first. Others struggle to decide on which list to place profit, and believe it can belong on either. Contributing to the good of the organisation as a whole, rather than simply one's own personal gain, is a values-based approach. However, for some organisations profit has become the only real value, and can therefore be self-serving espcially for those who gain personally from its achievement.


A question to consider is: What would your organisation not be prepared to do in the name of profit?