Corporate Values - Honesty

If you have this value in your corporate statement, this is what you should consider: get it out.

First of all because it is a clich. It has no real value because people will rate it low on credibility. Not only costumers will do this, but also employees will accept the value and than will not realize what it really means.

The second reason is that you cannot manage this value. It will cost you too much work to do so. It requires some kind of investigator culture where people are judged on what they say, whereas what you really want is to rate people on what they do.

In line with the previous argument(s), the value will make the value system become less acceptable when only a few people in the organization will not follow it through. Others will notice this and the system will loose credibility. This is an argument that counts for many (value) systems. The follow-up and discipline to stick to it.

Corporate values must make some kind of a sense in your organization. What will you gain when everybody is honest? You will paralyze the organization. A honest ambiance will be an incentive for criticism, and that you may need for some activities, but for most you do not. Honesty will negatively influence the organizational climate.

Corporate values should be designed so that they make sense for large group of people in the organization. In some departments you will find people to be more honest than others, but that serves a purpose. Production environments can do with a more than average demand for honesty, in sales environment the normal level will do just fine.

2007 Hans Bool

Hans Bool writes articles about management, culture and change. If you are interested to read or experience more about these topics have a look at: Astor White or sign-up for our newsletter.

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