It's popular because it doesn't ruffle any feathers.
I heard somewhere at some point that for organisational values to be useful, they need to provide guidance in making decisions. They need to be trade-offs. They need to reject something in favour of something else.
So, rephrasing your bullshit bingo:
"We are now pursuing a cultural shift: we will value good attitudes and difference of opinion over efficiency. We will start to ignore some of our personal goals and instead emphasise the goals we have in common."
This is actionable. It can be used to choose a path to proceed when efficiency is pitted against diversity. It actually says something.
And yeah, it's going to suck if you don't agree. Better that than meaningless drivel.
> I heard somewhere at some point that for organisational values to be useful, they need to provide guidance in making decisions. They need to be trade-offs. They need to reject something in favour of something else.
I think you really hit the nail on the head with this one, and it's why bullshit corporate value statements proliferate with ease: they can give the appearance of action without actually requiring any hard decisions.
If a company decides to spend times on these "values" exercises, I think it's important to phrase it in what the company won't do. I.e., if a potential client is offering a million dollar contract, but requires constraints X, Y and Z, which constraints would require the company say "No, we won't do this deal, even if it means we'd lose a million bucks in revenue".
Also, the other reason I get very jaded about "corporate values", is that it's easy to say that you have all these nice, progressive values, but when the shit hits the fan and the company is under duress, I've found those values usually go out the window, replaced by the only true value, which is "make money".
How is that actionable? Who defines what “good attitudes” and “the goals we have in common” is? Also “difference of opinion over efficiency” seems to indicate that it is better not to make progress, and be outcompeted by the competition, than to value one opinion over another. In other words, eventually the company will fail and everybody loose their jobs. People disagree all the time. You need a mechanism to pick one opinion over another to make progress.
Faced with two proposals for how to proceed on an issue, people very often agree on which proposal is the one indicative of "better attitude but less efficient" and which is "more brusque but also more efficient".
In other words, the disagreement is not about the characteristics of the approaches -- it's which characteristic to prioritise. Good values help with that.
Again not my experience at all. And the moment you bring religion, philosophy, history, culture, resource scarcity etc. into the equation things get really difficult. Sometimes impossible to resolve. Which is why war and violence is still with us today.
I heard somewhere at some point that for organisational values to be useful, they need to provide guidance in making decisions. They need to be trade-offs. They need to reject something in favour of something else.
So, rephrasing your bullshit bingo:
"We are now pursuing a cultural shift: we will value good attitudes and difference of opinion over efficiency. We will start to ignore some of our personal goals and instead emphasise the goals we have in common."
This is actionable. It can be used to choose a path to proceed when efficiency is pitted against diversity. It actually says something.
And yeah, it's going to suck if you don't agree. Better that than meaningless drivel.