Unlocking Organizational Success: How to Connect Personal Values with Corporate Culture

When I ask top executives about the biggest challenges their organizations face, almost all of them point to issues like unpredictability, shifting regulations, and AI. Essentially, they are all concerned by our world’s growing complexity. Complexity demands agility, and organizations must be able to maneuver quickly in our changing world. Executives know this. They often talk to me about agile systems, agile software, and agile business practices.

What many executives often fail to recognize, however, is that you can’t have an agile organization without a culture of agile people. Everything organizations plan for is dependent on people who bring the best of who they are forward each day, so that everyone thrives. These employees have the courage for conversation, they are curious, and they operate from a place of values and groundedness. This goes way beyond good hiring. It actually requires a shift in the workplace mindset to recognize that culture is shaped by the actions of the individual.

Organizational culture is, after all, behaviors repeated at scale. 

If you’re a leader, it’s essential to understand that employees won’t enact a value just because you claim it as your own or state its importance on your company website. Announcing a commitment to a customer first mindset, care, or innovation isn’t enough to make anyone feel kinship with that value, let alone change their behavior. These statements are largely viewed with deep cynicism as empty rhetoric.

So what is the most powerful way to move values from rhetoric to demonstrable reality?

People must be able to see and express their own individual values within the context of your larger organizational values.

If you want to elevate a customer focus in your company, for example, and you have an employee who values caring for others and generosity, help them make the connection between these values. Caring for others entails seeing the other person’s needs and cultivating the flexibility and ability to adapt to a wide range of perspectives. It is something that can be brought to every customer interaction. 

Even if you aren’t a leader, deepening the connection between personal values and the opportunity to act on them each day is extremely important for wellbeing. When we connect our values with our work, we accomplish three key benefits. We:

• reduce emotional labor
• manage stress
• increase engagement

If you don’t connect with your organization’s values, try to find an authentic way to bring them into harmony with your own. Do you love to be challenged but find yourself unmoved by your company’s aspirations of efficiency? Maybe you can try to think of your work as an intellectual puzzle to maximize your effectiveness.

Not everyone shares the same values, but these differences need not be a source of strife. With a little thought and consideration, you can find the places where your colleagues’ values intersect. Not only will your office be a happier place, but it will become more productive, as well.