A642.5.3.RB - Making Smart Groups

A521.5.4.RB - Aligning Values

by

Terrance Le Shore

An ePortfolio Blogger Assignment

Submitted to the Worldwide Campus

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

of Course MSLD 521, Leadership Communication

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
November 2015

A521.5.4.RB - Aligning Values

         Aligning personal values and corporate values: a personal and strategic necessity. What do I truly want out of my work life? What motivates me? How can I find an enriching organizational environment that is a “fit’ for me?

         These are the five core values I hold most sacred, that I can’t live without in my job/workplace taken from A521.5.1 assessment taken at the beginning of Module 5:

1. Clear advancement tracks/opportunities for advancement

2. Professional development and on-going learning and growth

3. Having self-respect and pride in work

4. Stability and security

5. Strong financial compensation and financial rewards

I feel these are the type of values many employees are seeking in the workplace: especially in today’s competitive sellers labor market.

         The process of developing and aligning organizational values means being creatively compulsive. It means going over the top with continuous improvement. Suppose one of your core values is encouraging employee participation and creativity, and therefore you want to encourage input and ideas from people throughout your organization. So you create a suggestion box. Is that alignment? Yes, it is an alignment mechanism, but to make it an effective mechanism, you must take the concept much further. Instead of sticking a suggestion box off by itself in some hallway, consider putting suggestion boxes in every hallway, corridor, conference room, and lunchroom—anywhere people might be when they get an idea. And don’t stop there. Add the commitment that every submission, anonymous or signed, will be responded to publicly within 48 hours in the form of a statement specifying what will be done and who is responsible for getting it done. And beyond that, perhaps give recognition, prizes, or bonuses for the best ideas and suggestions or even give “thanks for the input” prizes randomly to a subset of all suggestions, no matter how valuable. Now, that’s alignment.

We learn from the reading assigned in Module 5 of Stephen Denning’s “The Leader’s Guide of Storytelling”, that there are three basic components of an ethical community. They are: trust, loyalty, and solidarity. All three are components or “traits” that we seek in any relationship we enter. Aligning personal values and corporate values: a personal and strategic necessity.

In describing the alignment process, I have assumed that organization’s core values are already clearly defined. First organizational values cannot be set. Nor can you “install” new core values into people. Core values are not something people “buy in” to. People must be predisposed to holding them. At the top level of an organization, it is important to have a strong belief system and vision of what the organization stands for and what it values. The culture of the organization is always heavily influenced by the beliefs, attitudes and actions of the leaders of the company. This makes common sense given that an organization is nothing more than a collection of individuals. The individuals that are in senior positions of responsibility will usually utilize their personal experiences, beliefs and learning’s to drive the values of the organization (both good and bad). Along the way, they may even change the face of the organization over time as their values change and they decide to re-direct the focus of the organization.

References

Bingham, T. (2010, September 01). Aligning Learning with Organizational Results. Information Outlook, 10-12.

Denning, S. (2011). The Leader's Guide to Storytelling. San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass.