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Chapter 9 Values and Culture • 141

restricted to chartered accountants. Every organization has values. They
may not be posted on the Web site, or even written down, but they live
in the hearts of the people who work for the company . . . or not.

Identifying Values
An organization’s values cannot be “set”; you can only discover them. 6
Values are not a change mechanism, where they are “rolled out”; they
are already there. And although strategies, marketing messages, and
practices change over time, values do not. When identifying organiza-
tional values, companies need to be real. Often, their list of values con-
tains a few values that are aimed more at describing desired behaviors
than the actual behaviors. For example, a company may want to focus
its staff on teamwork, although in the past this has not been the case.
You have to be careful with weaving in desired values. If values are not
intuitively recognized by the staff, the response may be cynical and the
result will be misalignment instead of a better understanding and per-
formance.
Examples of organizational values are: accountability, quality-driven,
ambitious, cost-conscious, compassionate, challenging conventional
thinking, treating all equally, disciplined, trustworthy, highest levels of
integrity, skillful, entrepreneurial, never giving up, flexible, or being
innovative.
Values help understand the behaviors of people, they provide the nec-
essary context. Figure 9.2 shows a typical balanced scorecard. Well-
trained staff members run smooth processes, which lead to satisfied
customers who keep coming back, resulting in healthy financial results.
Successful companies have value drivers that make this happen. For
instance, the organization may really care about working with cus-
tomers; it is continuously busy with designing new and innovative prod-
ucts; or it is always looking to reach a higher level of operational
excellence.
If your strategy is about cost leadership or operational excellence,
most likely your values include thriftiness, efficiency, or discipline. Staff
can have fun looking for ways to cut costs and create a more efficient
operation. They pride themselves at having the most cost-effective
production, which is recognized by the clients, leading to healthy