What do you stand for?
So there I was last week lying flat on my back, writhing in agony, wondering what had happened to me.
Downhill skiing is my great passion – the speed, the fresh air and the winter sun, if you’re lucky. We all fall occasionally but what I hadn’t bargained for was someone flying into me from behind at top speed, catapulting me into the air, leaving me in a crumpled heap and then having the nerve to ski off.
Fortunately my injuries seem to be only severe bruising, which will subside in due course. But my anger at the behavior of this random skier, who didn’t stop, won’t. What’s even worse, I keep meeting other people who have had similar “hit and skid” experiences, often with much more serious injuries.
So, what’s this got to do with business you might well ask? It reminded me of a seminar I went to a couple of years ago, where the speaker asked the audience: “What do you stand for?” There was then a long pause. It’s a big question for all of us both within and outside the workplace.
About 18 months ago, I decided that having been through a very intense period of acquisitions at IRIS, it was essential that we established a common set of values and a culture for all the businesses and in particular, the 1,200 people that had now become part of the group. We needed something that we could be really proud of and create a tighter sense of community.
The big danger with these types of initiatives is that they too often fail if they are set just by the CEO and the board, and/or if the leaders within the organisation don’t live and breathe the values.
So, we set about a democratic process, where we ran workshops with our line managers and asked them what we stood for and what our values should be as a business. We then voted and chose the top five.
Our values, known internally as CHIPS are customer focus, honesty and integrity, innovation, passion and service excellence – all of which form part of the recruitment, appraisal and performance-related pay process, so that we can illustrate and celebrate great examples of them in action. They are also something we are proud to share with our customers.
As a friend of mine said to me this week, instead of being angry, maybe we should just feel sorry for those people who don’t live up to our own standards of behavior.