COMPANIES DON’T HAVE VALUES; PEOPLE DO.

There comes a point in the execution of any performance goal where you must ask your employee culture to trust you—at the most, that everything will be better when the goal is achieved; at the very least, that the goal is going to last awhile before being replaced by another. Chances are, you’re not going to get all of that trust. Certainly, you’re not going to get it all at once.

Management is focused on success, so it constantly looks forward, to what can be sold next. An employee culture is focused on survival, so it constantly looks backward, at what it has been sold before that didn’t work out as promised. Understandably, the culture’s memory is longer and more vivid. It may take a close look at what you’re selling this time, but from a distance. With binoculars.

Where could you possibly have lost trust with your culture—to such a degree that it greets new management plans with suspicion? If you’re searching for the answer, start by looking in the place where you’ve most asked for the trust: company values.

Better Add Danger to That List of Values

Every classic definition of values is that they are deeply held personal beliefs. In an organization with legitimate values, the person at the top brings their own values to work and insists that others be allowed to do the same. Common values rise to the surface; they define how people inside of the company are treated and spill over to how people outside of the company are treated. It’s a seamless, organic process.

What companies usually have are strategies—goals for increasing business. Nothing wrong with that except when they’re sold as values: An employee culture understands the difference even if the company doesn’t. One of the easiest ways to tell the difference is by watching what happens when pressure is applied to both. A strategy is a calculated method for achieving a result; under pressure of changing market conditions, an adept strategic team will change the strategy—it’s the first thing that’s sacrificed. A value is a deeply embedded belief; under pressure, people will fall on it to protect it with their lives—it’s the last thing that’s sacrificed. There is a big difference between a company’s value proposition and its values.

Should your company confuse the two, it will have taken the most profound of human concepts—values—and pitched it to the most profound of human organisms—a culture—under false pretenses. Trust will be fractured at a deep level, which you may not feel until you need the most trust from your culture or need it the fastest.

As a company: Try not to declare values. Protect them at all costs if you do.

It’s better if you don’t officially state enterprise values. It may feel really good to broadcast, but it’s the gateway drug to cultural detachment. When you are selling values, you are targeting your culture’s deep desire for protection and affiliation. No matter how the values are positioned as a shared responsibility of all to uphold, they’re perceived by an employee culture as a management manifesto, and the culture expects them to remain uncompromised.

Instead, let your employee culture declare them for you.

Regularly poll your employee culture: What does it think is sacred and unopen to compromise? This is an opportunity for your culture to reinforce what it believes is special about the company and invite dialogue about where the values are strongest and where they are most vulnerable. Don’t debate if the answers are not what you wanted to hear. Listen hard and assume best intentions from your culture.

The issue is what is genuine, not what is declared. Your company doesn’t need to publish a mission statement to have a mission, and you don’t need to write down values to make them real to your culture. But you do have to appreciate the natural tension between these enterprise sentiments and the real world of business that will attempt to constantly dilute them. Established values are difficult for companies that can rarely deal in absolutes within a shifting market environment.

Be sure, then, that yours is the kind of company that can take a stand in this one area: no succumbing to pressure or temptation to compromise, no hesitation about passionate response when they’re protected or violated. And get the trip wires, open communication, and fast response systems in place ahead of time.

As a Manager: Ask for Trust a Little Bit at a Time

As a manager, your job isn’t to establish corporate values, so don’t be worrying about that. Use the time you save to worry about getting results if your culture is wary about extending trust. Here’s how to do it:

As you’ve been told to do, you explain that everything will be bigger, better, and fixed forever as a result of the new company strategy. Should the culture believe this? Nah, given its experience it would be wrong to believe this, and you respect that. So you’re not asking them to trust you about everything —only about a few small things.

Promise a couple of things that, over a short period of time, will definitely happen in the name of the latest plan. Promise a couple of things that, over the same short period of time, will definitely never happen in the name of the latest plan. Explain up front that when you deliver on all of these things, you are going to come back to the culture to negotiate for more trust. This places the culture in a position where it would be unseemly to refuse to give you the little that you’ve asked for, especially if it could be a new clue to its survival.

A culture deals in the real: It wants proof and truth. You may not be able to give it proof that a new plan will work out as promised. Give it the truth.

This piece is adapted from Under The Hood: Fire Up And Fine-Tune Your Employee Culture