Why I don’t want to talk about values and principles

This is a very unpopular opinion, and I know that. But I think we all should spend less time talking about values and principles in our organizations. 

Before I jump into explaining why, first let me point out that I am not saying that values and principles aren’t useful. I’m saying that talking about values and principles to declare them important is less useful. Values and principles shape our thinking and what we care about. The question is, should we talk about them, and how does that help?

Values and principles can lack usefulness for decision-making

Let’s start with an easy example. Let’s assume an organization says they want to prioritize “people care.” Of course, that’s an honorable principle and there’s nothing wrong with that. 

Let’s say we ask them, “what do you do to take care of your people?” They say they have a policy that says “people can take unlimited vacation time; and people can take 3-month sabbaticals as needed with no questions asked.” That’s great – and it’s easy to imagine a situation where a co-worker has to pick up tasks from someone who decided to leave. So what about care for the person who stayed? 

In addition, there’s likely a higher cost associated with that approach which means that likely, people now make less money to support people taking time off. Or, ironically, it can mean that people are too proud to take time off because they could do so at any given time, and people still overwork. 

But “people care” is also a tall order. As such, it might be too big of a goal to reach, and it’s not specific which subset of people and how.

Generally, the more specific a value, principle or purpose is, the easier it is to live it in practice.  For example, having a principle of keeping the ratio between highest and lowest paid person under 2, that’s specific and actionable. The less specific, the more we’ll end up arguing about the how. 

The problem is, the more specific, the harder it will be to pass a proposal. Say in a meeting “it’s really important to care about people” and everyone will nod. Say “we shouldn’t pay bosses more than 2x what the intern is paid” and you’ll have a discussion on your hands. So the more specific, the more actionable but also less agreeable. 

Aren’t all values worthwhile? 

Principles and values, since they sound great in isolation, have a big appeal. I mean, no company would say on their website or in the boardroom “we actually don’t care about people.” You can’t say that, regardless of actual practices. That’s why there’s so much dishonesty about them. You have to agree, but no one says how to act on them. It’s a neat cop-out – lip service. 

Furthermore, is there actually a common value that we would say no to? Do you think that between integrity, transparency, kindness, innovation, dignity, collaboration, accountability, sustainability, learning, inclusion, willingness to experiment,  and customer focus, there’s a single one that an organization should not focus on? 

It strikes me that those are very universal values that should apply everywhere. So then why limit ourselves to one, or three? I understand when people have something they want to aspire to, but I struggle with which ones to choose. You see, the problem is that all values matter each time they matter. 

When my colleague lost her cat, kindness matters. When someone made a mistake, then dignity and learning are key. They all matter. In Nonviolent Communication, for example, the assumption is that all humans have all universal needs – so then why would groups of people (aka organizations) only have some of them and not the others? And if they all matter, why would I need to pick some? 

Values and principles chronically lack context

The keyword is context – the particular situation, ecosystem, moment in time, all of those can lead to us wanting to focus on particular subsets of our needs. That’s not unusual at all – for example, when I’m working, I am less inclined to answer every chatty text and might prioritize focused work. 

But contexts change. And that’s why our priorities also need to change. They need to change year to year, season to season, week to week, moment to moment. When my child walks in with a bleeding head wound, all clients have to wait. What’s important to see is that changing contexts make it impossible to hardwire our values into absolute statements. For example, “family over work” is too broad, too abstract and too void of context to catch all nuances – for example, I might work extra hours to afford a family trip and that simply does not fit into the reductionist narrative. 

Values and principles are only useful in consideration of the context, and by weighing other factors and the lived experience of the moment. So even if your company picks 3 values to write on the whiteboard, those are just part of the equation along with all context, other values and whatever else is going on. 

That means that if we’re honest, we always have to consider everything – our purpose, value, ecosystem needs, personal needs and the moment in time. Of course we can’t focus on “everything” and therefore we need to be good at discerning what’s relevant. 

The better people are at identifying the parameters the faster they can consider more information. That’s why learning NVC is a great catalyst for understanding ourselves and others and learning decision-making is great for metabolizing information into a shared commitment. Having inner clarity on values and principles comes in handy to have that discussion. So talking about values and principles is great for creating that inner clarity. But then the truth is that we don’t act because a given principle tells us to, but we do a certain thing because we’ve discerned that given this context and what we care about, this is the principle that seems the appropriate one to hold up. So it’s of descriptive, not of prescriptive value. 

That means: your values and principles are relevant but so are a lot of other things from the context. What I’m more interested in than your value statements is how good you are at the process of accessing and metabolizing information and deep context knowledge, and how good you are at weighing and discerning what you know to come to a context-appropriate result in a cyclical way.

This process of Relevance Realization (John Vervaeke), applied to organizational processes is what this project is about, and that’s the conversation I’m interested in.