A better values question

There's a predicatable gap between what an organisation says it values and what actually shows up in how people work.

Your website says you value collaboration, but people work in silos and get ahead by not sharing knowledge.

Your values say integrity, but people stay quiet about issues to protect themselves.

Your posters say innovation, but people get shut down when their ideas challenge the status quo.

That gap doesn't mean you're a bad organisation. It means the intention hasn't been built into how you actually work. Values have to be lived, repeatedly, especially when it's inconvenient.

So the question isn't: do we have good values?

The question is: what are we actually tolerating, and is that aligned with what we want to be?