Charting The Course Issue #14 - WHAT VALUES ARE REALLY FOR
- Peter McLean
- Jun 23
- 5 min read
Issue #14, May 2025
May 12, 2025
WHAT VALUES ARE REALLY FOR
Everyone hears constantly about Vision, Mission, Values, right? And how tiresome they so often are, unrelated to the reality of daily actions and decisions.
As I say so often when facilitating strategy or leadership sessions or speaking to clients, most of those Values were picked off the back of a cereal box - excellence, people, integrity, etc.
And the Vision & Mission & Values are interchangeable not only with themselves but with a million other companies. "Be the best centre of excellence for our customers!" So, what DO you actually do again?!
Here's one VMV Statement on the top of their website from one of the world's biggest and most recognisable advisory names: "At ________, we believe together is the future—it’s what drives us. Together, we work with some of the world's brightest minds to provide a wide variety of services for a range of industries. Together, we help our clients, people and communities thrive. And together, we make progress."
Who focus-grouped that?! Yeah, we get it: together, together, together, together. I have no clue from that what they do. But apparently, they like doing it together.
And they probably spent at least a million dollars of time and "expertise" to develop and promote that idea.
But here's where Values are actually important in our current challenges:
I was discussing the national and international environment with two top executives of a major Australian enterprise that has significant operations across Australia and the region, serving multiple industries. They are affected in so many direct and indirect ways by the current turmoil introduced by the US government.
Both leaders, stationed in different parts of the country, were noting how so many of their clients in multiple industries are reacting with alarm, impulsive responses and decisions that are damaging their businesses, staff and customers.
They pointed out that their own business was solid. Instead of reacting impulsively, questioning how they were to react given the latest midnight pronouncement on X by a certain US President, or of being thrown about by the latest query or concern, they followed through based on their actual values.
For example, paying attention to wobbling supply lines, they are able to focus on their values of pride in their product and service and their value of community. Those values have driven both their diversity of supply and the generation of their own local supply, in order to ensure a high quality product they can be proud of. They are providing the best product they can for their clients, while building up the community of local suppliers and the customers they serve in the process.
Their existing values have informed their strategy and operations for many years. Yes, they do need to make adjustments now, but they do so with certainty. More importantly, whether their business shrinks or grows is less important to them than following through on what is important to them - their values.
A further example is their focus on the value of community and pride in their work: It means they have a diversified customer base - they want to help serve local communities throughout Australia. That means their exposure to any one industry - and downturns that may be currently facing that industry - is not going to sink their company. They have options because they've already been working in line with values that mean something to how they decide and operate.
Consider this importance of values in other ways. For example, when you may be faced with challenges with staff: Do you treat the staff member dismissively? Do you "pivot" and change position to accommodate an abusive "high performer"? Do you panic at the opposition of a union? Your actual values are going to be the factor in how you respond to any of these situations. They will also demonstrate in the long-run whether those values are efficacious or whether you should rethink them at a fundamental level.
In this way, your values become the connector for your decisions through turbulent times.
Values are the through-line for your decisions in periods of uncertainty and turbulence.
The Foundation Of Values
One of the things I do when working with organisations and leaders is not to focus on values a priori in Strategy or Leadership. I find the whole Vision, Mission, Values model absolutely inadequate for Leadership and Strategy. Why?
One of the reasons is: Values are actually dependent on beliefs and are demonstrated in our continued behaviour.
The way to challenge or change values at a fundamental level is to challenge the beliefs and practices on which they are founded.
Our beliefs, and our attendant experiences, education, training and dispositions, will shape our values. Our beliefs about the world and how people, organisations, economics, professions and the world works will all shape what we hold to be our behavioural values.
That's why the values in a box choice system does not work. Values are an expression of our beliefs, not the foundation of those beliefs. As we learn to identify and reinforce them, however, those values help guide us in our continuing choices minute-by-minute, day-by-day.
BUZZWORDS AND VALUES IN A HUMOROUS VEIN
Over Mother's Day dinner last night, a couple of my siblings and their respective spouses were telling us about a fantastic event they attended last week. "You would have loved it, Peter" (Mind you, they didn't bother to tell me about it in advance and now it's too late.) The show is by comedians James Schloeffel and Charles Firth. (Read their fantastic profiles here.)
It is "W_____nomics" (I cannot spell out the full name as it's a rude word in Australia and the UK), a comedy show about horrible business words, phrases and language, like "circling back", "moving forward", "vertical alignment", and so on.
My sibs said the show laughed about the values statements as simply a list a company creates when they hire the consultant who gives everyone 5 words to choose from. That's then their value statement.
It's like the High School English course run by the teacher: "What values are conveyed in this passage?" The teacher provides you the list to pick from, because you, the student, are sitting there thinking: "What on earth is a value? I dunno'!"
And "W_____nomics" is spot on! You may want to check them out if they are coming to a venue near you. (Warning: some explicit language from what I see of their YouTube promos.)
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