[ On Diamonds, Pencils & Corporate Chemistry ]

It’s easy to see why employees and managers get frustrated when the time comes to nail down an organization’s values. No matter how hard you work to capture your company’s unique essence, the values always seem to come out strikingly uniform and bland.

Honestly, who doesn’t value Excellence? Is any company going to say they don’t care about Character, Quality, Partnership, Communication, or Integrity? So what’s going to make your corporate values distinct?

Corporate culture. Personal connections and interactions. In short, chemistry.

The analogy is an apt one. Think back to high school. You learned that when a lot of carbon atoms bond a certain way they form a soft substance that slides apart easily: graphite (the “lead” in pencils). But under a different set of circumstances, these same carbon atoms bond another way, forming the world’s hardest mineral: a diamond.

The elements are the same. What changes is how the bonds are expressed. The resulting substances are radically different.

The same is true for organizations. Instead of chemical bonds, we mean the bonds between people – in other words,your organization’s culture. The values may be the same, but it’s your company’s culture that affects how these values get expressed...and how they get put into action.

For instance, two firms might both name one of their values to be “Communication.” A large computing firm might see Communication to mean having clear email protocols and using online discussion listservs. A small consulting firm might see Communication represented at the weekly round-table discussions attended by the whole staff.

One structure isn’t necessarily better than another, nor will it work equally as well for all companies. A diamond is useless if you’re taking the SATs. And you’d look silly exchanging engagement pencils with your future spouse. Likewise, round-table discussions might be unwieldy in our giant tech firm. And a rigid email chain won’t foster freewheeling brainstorming sessions among our consultants. The goal of clear Communication may be constant, but the path to achieving it is different for each company. The same goes for the rest of your values – Integrity, Quality, Partnership, Efficiency, and so forth.

So when the time comes to define your core values, take some extra time to look at how those values actually play out in day-to-day operations. By understanding your organization’s culture,you can track how its values are put into play,and by pointing to the values as models for behavior,you set goalposts for performance. By understanding your organization’s chemistry...how the bonds between people are forged, broken, and transformed...and how values get brought to life...you can stir up quite a reaction.

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