Turn in any direction these days, and you’ll trip over people talking about their purpose. This is not a bad thing; it’s essential to individual and group endeavours.Yet, when I look past the virtue signals of purpose-led this and purposeful that, I struggle to see how people put it to...
Values aren’t on or off. It’s more of a slippery slope kind of thing. And while people expend untold efforts labelling what a value is, scant attention gets paid to what it isn’t and even less to when it goes too far.My recent articles have explored values, culture and brand....
Sticking with values, I want to expand on an element of Aristotle’s golden mean from my last article. I call it productive tension.Look under the covers of successful organisations, and you will find tension at work. No, I’m not talking about “this place sucks” hostility.You can most commonly find my kind of...
Too many conversations about values start by asking are they right or wrong. But for most organisations “How do we use them?” is a more worthy and useful question.I’ll go further. It’s the only question that truly matters. And I’m not talking about laundry lists of behaviours for doing this...
On the bottom shelf of my bookcase, I’ve got a small library of books and a stack of papers that explore promises and commitments.The authors ramble at length about the moral foundations and legal consequences of making, keeping and breaking promises. Yet, beyond the examples they use, none provide tools...
"Walk your talk" is attributed as a simpler way of saying, "if you're going to talk the talk, you've got to walk the walk". In this case, simpler isn't better, and when I saw a recent tweet using the shorter saying, my immediate response was, "that's backwards". Dangerously backwards. Feeding into...
When an organisation puts a ‘fun place to work’ in their values, they often mean a games room, funky furniture and kombucha on tap. Not how they carry out the unheroic work living beneath the trappings.The Play Ethic author Pat Kane says play “Helps release thoughts that are locked in...
Values are not there as a billboard for your goodness.Frankly, I don’t care what someone who doesn’t work for me, with me and buy from me thinks of them and nor should you.So, when I talk about good and bad values, it’s not with any moral judgement. Instead, it’s the...
Are you a trust given or a trust earned person?In my experience, everyone is one or the other, and like oil and water, the two don’t mix. When earners run into givers, things quickly become the trust edition of a Mexican stand-off.It’s one of the things I look for when...
Consequences always follow promises, and the nature of the outcome is determined by whether you keep or break them.At first glance, broken promises appear to exert a more significant impact. And indeed, the hurt caused deserves attention. Less examined are the gains from keeping them.It’s easy to overlook the rippling...