To be successful, all organizations should adopt a specific set of defining values.
These values determine how people within this organization think, talk, and act. They define what is acceptable and what is not. Clearly communicating and living organizational values will ensure clarity, consistency, accountability, performance, results, and customer satisfaction. These values should be promoted through all available communications tools for both employees and clients. Employees should be recruited, hired, evaluated, and promoted based upon these stated values.
All members of the team should know, understand, believe in, and act according to these values. They should be seen in their actions, heard in their conversations, and believed within their hearts.
The right set of values will enable an organization to fulfill its mission, goals, and objectives. The wrong set of values or the failure to adhere to the right set of stated values will undermine organizational effectiveness and productivity (Bacharach, 2014; Campbell & Gortiz, 2013; Murray, 2009; Trice & Beyer, 1993; Watkins, 2013).
Leadership is responsible for selecting, teaching, modeling, and protecting the values of the organization. Once again, if leaders recruit, hire, evaluate, and promote based upon these values, they should become and remain the culture of the organization. All tools available to leaders should be employed to foster and defend the values of the organization (Kotter, 2012).
Consistency and authenticity are key. People do best with the predicable and expected. Mixed messages are counterproductive. The values of the organization must be continuously promoted and protected (Watkins, 2013).
Either you lead and set and sustain the values for the organization or someone else will (Abrashoff, 2002). Values decide the destiny of any organization.
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