Geelmuyden.Kiese

TANKER

VISIONS, VALUES AND WHAT’S WORSE
25.07.2006

In the June 26th edition of the newspaper “Dagens Næringsliv” (Business Today), Mr. Lars Klemsdal, research worker at the Work Research Institute, criticizes the business sector’s preoccupation with visions and value basis. He is of the opinion that the “vision hysteria” has no long-term effect and that the employees’ integrity is being violated. Visions are empty rituals if concrete problems are not initially confronted, like “what’s a good job result and what does it take to achieve it?”

Let it be said at once – I don’t believe that the advertising industry should be responsible for creating visions and values. But contrary to Mr. Klemsdal, I am convinced that visions and values are crucial to all organisations dependent on achieving increasingly better results. If anything has a long-term effect, it’s visionary thinking.

Any commercial organisation, as well as an increasing number of public institutions, are completely dependent on continuously changing themselves in order to be on top of the competition, or simply in order to defend their own existence. A vision is a long-term objective meant to provide all employees in the company with a common direction and an understanding of which way to move in order to be best at what we’re doing. With a good vision in place, it’s consequently much easier to carry out the organisational changes that Mr. Klemsdal wants to implement. They’ll make sense in a long-term perspective and won’t be just co-operative cures for the here and now. But, as Mr. Klemsdal points out, there’s often a reluctance against visionary thinking in the organisation. In my opinion, this arises from one of the following conditions or a combination of these:

• The vision is badly expressed and the values seem unfamiliar.
• The management fails to communicate the vision properly, often because it’s felt that the vision is not optimal.
• The formulation of the vision is market-oriented and consequently communicates no choices, but simply gives a rosy-red image of organisation and product. Own employees feel offended and the management embarrassed.
• Organisational culture is privilege-based, and more effort is put into protecting own position and privileges than into future opportunities for the organisation.

In privilege-based organisations visions are seen as a threat because they describe change, and any change is a threat against privileges. Division between employees and employers flourishes, and the management’s gift to itself and to the employees is often endless organisational development processes. In the great majority of modern organisations, private as well as public, the most important challenge is, however, too little change – not too much.

Having a firm foundation in values and vision throughout the organisation is a mantra embraced by most as an incontestable truth. “Visions will have no effect unless firmly rooted throughout the organisation,” it’s been said. I don’t agree. Time should be spent on listening to the whole organisation, but one must still be aware that responsibility for changes lies with the management. In order to catch today’s culture one must listen to the organisation, but in order to decide which culture we should have, i.e. define the value basis on which we should recruit and towards which we should develop ourselves, we need a visionary thought governed by business strategic principles. How to compete successfully? If we fail to answer this question the vision is void of meaning , and the values describing the culture we need in order to get there, isn’t worth much either. One can benefit from listening to the organisation, but responsibility for strategy and direction lies with the management. The error is rather that one often arrives at a vision with little meaning in relation to the strategy and in which one doesn’t believe. The consequence is under-communication of a vision which one basically has little faith in, and this will be ridiculed within the organisation. A number of organisations use vision as an external slogan. This arises from the traditional responsibility of the Market Department to handle everything connected with communications, and consequently the vision also becomes market oriented. But the vision is supposed to provide us with market success, not sale of the product itself. For this purpose we may use any appropriate sentence and call it whatever we like. Building market relations is about giving the customer a promise, and then keeping it. The vision, with its long-term perspective, is normally not suitable for describing the customer promise.

When visions and values have been worked out, they have consequences. It’s obviously smart to assess the consequences prior to deciding what the vision and values should be like, but by letting strategic direction have priority and by lifting the visionary discussion above the organisation’s daily challenges, narrow-mindedness and protection of privileges and position may be avoided.

In the army I was taught to write orders. A basic principle in all order-writing, whether it is an operational order for a naval fleet or a patrol order for three infantrymen, is that the superior objective should be explained – the boss’s task. If this information is not shared, the consequence is that one gets tied up in even the smallest challenge in daily tasks instead of working towards the real objective. A visionary thought and superior direction from the management oils the machinery and prevents friction. Another important consequence of a well defined value basis and vision is that not everybody feels at home in the organisation. This is quite all right and is part of the point of defining a clear vision. Any organisation competing with others must stand out, and a natural consequence is that not everybody who meets the formal requirements for filling a position is suited to the organisation. In case anybody with the correct formal background is a suitable employee, the vision and the value basis have been much too broadly defined. Vision and the working out of values are important tools in the efforts for standing out and a sound value process will consequently entail some strategic choices not wholly comfortable for the organisation.

In a changing world, it follows that describing where the company wants to go is more important than describing where we are. Hence vision. Provided that we have a culture contributing to moving us closer to this, we must have the courage to describe this culture through a value basis – because this brings results in the marketplace. We will attract the right kind of people, able to identify with the culture and wanting to contribute to working towards the vision. My claim is that this makes people far happier than focusing on other institutional factors like matrix organising, parking space, ergonomic keyboards and fruit baskets in the office. If we succeed, we’ll earn money and may rent as much parking space as we care to have. If we don’t , it is at least more inspiring to work towards a common goal than solving organisational conflicts we didn’t even know existed.

Ståle Mortensson