Rol and Mike have had a very good exchange of ideas. I thought I would
share something that worked well for me.
Rol wrote in response to a statement made by Mike:
> Values co-exist in networks, not as individual entities. I
> would even go further, and say that even once we have
> identified a value -- say love of the environment -- we still
> do not know what that means when professed by
> different people.
And then a whole bunch of other really good stuff.
Values at any level are clearly important. The values we profess as
individuals should guide our behavior, as should our organizational values
guide our business decisions. However, I've noticed something (from
personal experience and observation): People rarely spend the time they
should to understand their values and how they are connected or related to
one another.
I made this observation a couple of years ago, when I noticed that there
were some profound differences between my values and my behavior; and the
same observation was made at work -- the organization often behaved in
ways that were contradictory to the professed values.
This is what I did to reconcile my values and behaviors -- how pertinent
this is to organizations I don't know. . .I haven't tried it in that
setting.
I became a systematic examination of all of my values. I began listing
them, in no particular order, until I felt that I had comprehensively
covered all of them. To my surprise my behavior was worse than I
originally thought!
The next thing I did was begin to organize my values, using an
object-oriented approach (for those who are not familiar with
object-oriented programming, it is a form of taxonomy which allows objects
to be grouped according to their relationship to one another). I began
with a few values at the top -- the major ones such as honesty, virtue,
etc. -- and then I began placing each value in place beneath the governing
values. I even went so far as to use "inheritance" to determine the
attributes one value should inherit from another. The relationship between
my values became far more clear, and the implications of those values
became even more obvious.
Now when I confront a situation that may challenge one of my values I'm
able to run down through my "value tree" and determine the affect changing
a single value would have on my entire value system; I'm also able to make
real-time decisions that are better aligned with my values.
And so I have a value network (actually I call it a value tree) that
governs my life. It took me over two years to work through the process,
and in the process many of my values changed as I eliminated values that
were either incoherent or that conflicted with one another. This is at
least a good exercise, and it will certainly help any individual think
deeply about what they value and how those values should govern behavior!
--Benjamin B. Compton ("Ben") | email: bcompton@novell.com Novell GroupWare Technical Engineer | fax: (801) 222-6991
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>