If you had 10 units of time to invest between crafting your corporate values and defining actual behaviors that embody them, how would you carve those units up?
This thought came to me at a recent keynote I delivered. As a passionate advocate for values-based leadership, I spoke of the importance of values in my own leadership journey. The audience was a highly engaged mix of bright, young professionals, one of whom asked me what role I thought AI might play in helping companies shape their values, and how I felt about it.
I loved the question. My answer, in the moment, and I still stand by it…if AI can help you pick 4 or 5 sharp, specific values that align with your beliefs and culture, and can do it in 30 minutes vs. over a 3 day offsite, then DO IT! I would much rather come into an offsite with a leadership team with those values already selected, and instead, invest time in thoughtful dialogue around the specific behaviors that do, and don’t, represent those values in action.
We lived through Values exercises at adidas more than once. And the ones that stuck, that truly shaped and guided culture, were the ones with specificity behind them. When you can clearly articulate specific behaviors that are relevant to your business and reflect the choices your people will be confronted with on a daily basis, you make your values real. You make them tangible. You make them actionable.
And rather than simply tasking AI to define those behaviors as well, I’d always lean to real dialogue, with real leaders, for two reasons. One, your leaders understand your people and culture. They understand your nuance. They can craft the behaviors in a language your people understand and speak. And two, your leaders will also feel a greater sense of buy-in when their voices have been heard along the way.
Picking 4 or 5 values and wordsmithing them isn’t where the true value of values lies. It’s not about how pretty they look on a slide or poster. So yes, by all means, let AI help you pick your starting point.
If I had 10 units to invest in picking the words or defining the behaviors, I’d be tempted to put 9 or 10 in the latter, because behaviors are where the rubber really hits the road when it comes to shaping your corporate culture. Culture is what happens when you’re not in the room, and behaviors are the foundation.
