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A Case Story: Recreating the Work Environment Applications of Flexible Thinking and Values The Situation A financial services company had a successful business strategy in place and had experienced excellent growth in the previous five years. Senior management had been working with a strategy consultant and had done some team building as part of that process. Management and the Board of Directors wanted to take the quality of the work environment to the next level. They knew very little about values. The Board and the Management decided to jointly participate in the following development plan:
The Process We completed the Flexible Thinking training. Many people started appreciating and having fun with their differences instead of getting into conflict. There were frequent respectful and humorous references to the profiles and the thinking preferences of different people. Communication and collaboration got even better. Sometime later, I interviewed the 23 members of the Board and the Management for the purpose of eliciting their 5 most important values. There was a potential for 115 different values (23 people X 5 values each). 57 different values showed up in the top 5 list of the group. 5 people had happiness as their top value. Each of the following values was chosen by 2 people as their top value:
Each value with the word peace had a different meaning. 8 other values were top-ranked only once. The following chart lists the values that were ranked #1. The second chart alphabetically lists all the values that were selected.
Conclusions This was a very values-diverse group, and is typical of most groups. The top values were very abstract, and that is typical of most individuals. The values ranged from very concrete to very abstract, and that is typical of most groups.
There is a way! I was told this story and it's an excellent example to help you understand what's involved. A young couple was having difficulty in their relationship. When one of them was sick, they would accuse the other of not loving them and not caring. The wife was asked what her husband needed to do or say to her that would get her to believe that he cared for her and loved her. She said he should bring her the food she needs, take care of the house responsibilities, and keep her company. When the husband was asked, he said she should bring him food, take care of the house responsibilities, and leave him quietly by himself. As a result, when she was sick, he was lovingly staying away from his wife, which made her think that he didn't love her. When he was sick, she was often in the room talking to him, which made him think she didn't love him because she didn't give him the quiet space he needed. In effect, they each had different sets of criteria or evidence that determined when love is present. This is very common and happens with other values like integrity and respect. Think of how often you or others behave in ways that you think are respectful, yet other people take it as being disrespectful or insulting. For example, have you ever paid someone a compliment and they interpreted it as an insult of some sort? During a values workshop with a team of business executives, one of the members said, "I get it. I understand why we're having such difficulty in the team. We don't have mutual trust." A few others disagreed. To deal with the disagreements I asked each person to go to the flip charts and write three pieces of evidence for mutual trust that are most important to them, personally. By evidence, I mean sensory evidence. What they must see or hear to believe that mutual trust is present. An example is, "I can count on a person to tell me the good and bad news." They came up with about 25 examples. I asked each person to visit each piece of evidence on all the charts and put an "X" by the evidence that they believed was not important for mutual trust. The result was that almost 80% of the criteria had at least one "X." This also meant that there was common ground on only 20% of the evidence. This is another example of how we can often have significantly different, and simultaneously somewhat similar evidence (criteria) for our values. This leaves plenty of opportunity to innocently violate each other's values when we were intending to support them. As a result, good people are often saying and doing nasty things to other good people. On the other hand, there is a magnificent opportunity to acknowledge, emphasize and strengthen the common ground in the evidence of our values. We can build work environments based on the threads of common ground as a way of getting people's values satisfied.
Now, here's the rest of the story. Each person was asked to identify their three most important pieces of evidence for their top values. That came to 345 pieces of evidence for the 23 people. The group then found evidence that had common characteristics and put them in clusters. For example "helping others, coaching, and sharing information" were put in the same cluster. Six clusters evolved plus a few pieces of evidence that did not fit neatly into any cluster. The group named each cluster by generalizing with some words that embodied the content of all the evidence in that cluster. The names chosen for the clusters were:
A statement was developed for each cluster. For example, "Concern For Employee Morale and Welfare" was represented with:
These clusters and correlating statements became the common ground that described the work environment they wanted to create that would provide the best chance for getting their values satisfied. The description of the Work Environment became a guideline for behavior, relationships and change processes. The description of Values of Our Work Environment becomes more than a piece of paper that sits in someone's drawer. The responses are more likely to be:
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