Spirit of Organization

The word “values” has different meanings for different people in different contexts. In this post, I’m using it to describe deeply held beliefs about ultimate desired outcomes and how to achieve them. People hold values at different levels. Chris Argyrus (1996) described this difference as “espoused values” versus “theories in use.” An espoused value is “the theory of action which is advanced to explain or justify a given pattern of activity” (p. 13). A theory in use is “the theory of action which is implicit in the performance of that pattern of activity.” Another way to say this is that people, and organizations, often proclaim one set of values that they are supposed to follow; but their actual behavior may exhibit another set of values, the ones that are really driving their actions.

I drove past a church building one Saturday in the early evening and read the name on their sign. It was something like “The Friendly Christian Church.” The church building had a circular driveway in front and at both ends of the driveway there was a chain extended across the entrance that had a sign hanging from it that read: “No Trespassing.” While most churches do not display such blatant inconsistency, they do often project one idea with their words–Such as “God loves all people” and “Jesus forgives sinners”–while their gestures and treatment of those outside their fellowship is something quite different.

People rarely, if ever, achieve a complete integration between what they say and what they do; but the closer they get to that goal, the more likely they are to become high-capacity individuals who accomplish great things for their organizations, churches, and society. When this happens, we might say that a person’s soul is in alignment; their actions are consistent with what they say and believe that they believe.

I’m not talking here about hypocrisy; that’s a different animal. Hypocrisy is a form of lying. It is the deliberate proclaiming of some value with full awareness that we don’t really believe it. What I’m talking about is a natural human process of development where the individual becomes aware of new truth, espouses that truth intellectually, and then begins to walk the road toward making that truth a reality in their personal experience.

A great illustration of this can be found in the Gospel of Mark where a man comes to Jesus and asks him to heal his son. The man says: “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” Jesus responded: “What do you mean if you can? All things are possible to him who believes.” To this, the man responded: “I do believe, help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).

In leadership, we constantly face this duality of human nature. One of our purposes as leaders is to help people move from theoretical values into the reality of those values, to help them in their unbelief. When the man asked Jesus to help his unbelief, he was, in a sense, crying out for leadership, for someone to show him how to become a more integral person, whose espoused beliefs and functional values are one and the same. This is one of the greatest services a leader can perform for people.  Following is a list of actions you can take to accomplish this.

Reward what you value. Often, it is not the individual who is at fault when a wide gap persists between espoused and real values. The organization itself often perpetuates this situation by inadvertently rewarding the values that it does not espouse and punishing those that it does. Take, for example, the classic situation I have observed in many churches that proclaim the truth that “the church is not a building; it is the people.” Yet, they reinforce the opposite by insisting that all “church activity” takes place within the walls of the “church” building and they keep referring to that building as “the church.” They also praise those who “attend regularly” while never mentioning the activities of those who serve Christ in so many ways in their workplace and in their communities. Leaders need to take a hard, honest, look at the attitudes and practices they reward.

Measure what you value. If we really value something, we must find ways to measure the extent to which that value is actually functioning. There are some good resources to help organizations develop this capacity such as Douglas Hubbard’s book, How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of “Intangibles” in Business.

The following list of five truths related to measurement also apply here:

• We don’t know what we don’t know.
• We can’t do what we don’t know.
• We won’t know until we measure.
• We don’t measure what we don’t value.
• We don’t value what we don’t measure (Harry & Schroeder, 2000).

Model what you value. Values are more caught than they are taught; we absorb them from the people we admire and with whom we spend time. This is why coaching and mentoring are so important in the development of people. The only way we can influence the values of another person is by spending time with them and giving them a living example of what we’re talking about.

Design life experiences of what you value. Words alone can never move people from espoused values to real values. We must provide opportunities to experience the reality of the values we espouse. In this way, experience becomes a kind of confirmation that moves these values into the realm of conviction. We do this by providing them with real-time experiences that reinforce and give body to the theory. Our theoretical values are like empty recipients into which life must be poured so that they take on meaning.

Leaders are always looking for ways to unlock the hidden potential in people. One of the most effective things we can do to achieve this is to help people embed the values they espouse into their hearts and experience. Leaders who understand and practice this principle will develop high-capacity individuals and high-capacity organizations.

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Works Cited

Argyris, Chris, and Donald A. Schön, Organizational Learning II: Theory, Method, & Practice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1996.

Harry, Michael, and Richard Schroeder, Six Sigma. New York: Doubleday, 2000.