Management with Values

Val­ues are our con­vic­tions; they make us who we are. To act on them is easy for us, it makes pulling in the same di­rec­tion a fun thing and it pro­motes a com­mon cor­po­rate cul­ture. A cul­ture that af­fects the suc­cess of the com­pa­ny.

When some­one speaks of val­ue, we quick­ly think of an eco­nom­ic, mon­e­tary val­ue. If we change in­to the plur­al, val­ues, we are in the philo­soph­i­cal, in val­ue propo­si­tions, which are re­gard­ed as de­sir­able. These are our con­vic­tions. And act­ing ac­cord­ing to them is a log­i­cal con­clu­sion; peo­ple who share our val­ues are clos­er to us than oth­ers.

Iden­ti­fy man­age­ment val­ues

The same con­cept can be ap­plied to the man­age­ment of em­ploy­ees. If we share the same val­ues, we hold to­geth­er, we stand for each oth­er and are part of the whole. The fo­cus on the val­ues of a per­son is an ef­fec­tive tool to pro­mote the work mo­ti­va­tion and job sat­is­fac­tion to keep smart em­ploy­ees in the com­pa­ny and to re­solve con­flicts pro­duc­tive­ly. In ad­di­tion, a val­ue-ori­ent­ed man­age­ment is more sta­ble in the long term than a lead­er­ship, which on­ly looks at short-term (mon­e­tary) suc­cess.

How to reach the goal?

Pow­er­ful lead­er­ship should not be achieved by force. But with care, with strat­e­gy, with val­ues. Main­tain a co-ex­is­tence on the same lev­el, a re­la­tion­ship in which the par­ties are equal­ly en­ti­tled and in­volved. For ex­am­ple, joint ac­tiv­i­ties help: Shoot a cor­po­rate video and write the script to­geth­er or cre­ate new process­es and de­part­ments to­geth­er by form­ing fo­cus groups that search for com­mon de­nom­i­na­tors.

Liv­ing the brand

The brand should be alive, it has to be car­ried and trans­port­ed to the out­side as a com­mon val­ue to take full ef­fect. For this, it has to work prop­er­ly on the in­side: Val­ues must be emo­tion­al­ly an­chored, in­te­grat­ed in­to dai­ly work life and un­der­stood in the long term.

When val­ues be­come valu­able

A com­pa­ny that places val­ues at the cen­ter of its lead­er­ship cul­ture has a de­ci­sive ad­van­tage over its com­peti­tors in the mar­ket: com­mon val­ues strength­en the iden­ti­ty of the com­pa­ny. And em­ploy­ees who rec­og­nize them­selves in this iden­ti­ty are mo­ti­vat­ed to achieve great things. Thus, val­ues be­come valu­able to the com­pa­ny. Al­so in a mon­e­tary sense. The long-term suc­cess will prove you right.

Bild: Pok Rie, CC0