Your Company Core Values are Like a Covenant With Your People
When daily challenges make it difficult to live up to our part of the covenant, we can rely on the fact that God has given us everything we need. He’s told us everything we need to know. He has given us food for the journey. This celebration should transform us. So how are we going to be different this week because we’ve participated in this Eucharistic celebration?
Welcome to the tenth episode of By Your Life. Thank you for joining me. If you haven’t already, please subscribe at the bottom of the page so I can send you notifications when each new episode is posted.
My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular, business world. It is my desire to help you live your Catholic faith in the marketplace, and to trust that it is good for business. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.
In this edition, we will reflect on the readings for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. The source and summit of our faith – the Eucharist is celebrated in a special way this Sunday. But, how can it be any more special than when it is celebrated at any Mass? And, how do we relate what happens at Mass to our daily work lives?
I just returned from an 18-day pilgrimage to Europe. During this trip, we attended daily Mass in cities across Spain, Portugal, Italy and France. They were Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Latin, French, Croatian, English and multilingual celebrations. I truly felt the beauty of our one catholic apostolic Church. The words from the Eucharistic prayer: “your pilgrim Church on earth” stood out to me more than ever. We are all pilgrims on a journey to our eternal destination, and the most holy Body and Blood of Christ are our food for the journey. This celebration should transform us. So how are we going to be different this week because we’ve participated in this Eucharistic celebration?
I found a lot of lessons in the readings for this Solemnity. In the first reading from the Book of Exodus 24:3-8, we heard about the covenant of the Lord.
Moses came to the people and related all the words and ordinances of the LORD, and they all answered with one voice, “We will do everything that the LORD has told us.” Moses then wrote down all the words of the LORD. He read it aloud to the people, who answered, “All that the LORD has said, we will heed and do.” Then he took the blood and splashed it on the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant which the LORD has made with you according to all these words.”
Listen again to what the people said. “We will do everything that the Lord has told us.” And, “All that the Lord has said, we will heed and do.”
How strong is your commitment to the words and ordinances of the Lord? Do you let them guide your behaviors in the workplace? Do you reflect on them when faced with a decision? I try to. I also fail. But, having a set of guiding principles that are clear, written, and remembered is an important part of continuous improvement. Without them, anything goes.
Having a set of guiding principles that are clear, written, and remembered is an important part of continuous improvement. Without them, anything goes.When I hear of Moses receiving the words and ordinances of the Lord and then shared them with the people, it reminds me of executives who go off on a strategic planning retreat and come back and share the newly drafted company vision, mission and core values with their team. There are lessons here for everyone, whether a CEO, team leader or individual contributor. These lessons are included in the Five Keys to Success from my book, The Value of Core Values.
First, you have to own the core values. As it said in the reading, the people “answered with one voice,” everyone on the team, from the boardroom to the boiler room, must not only agree to live by them, they must want to live by them.
If you haven’t recently, you should personally review the core values of your company and decide whether you are willing to make decisions based on these values. Are you willing to honor them in the same way as the people when they said, “We will do everything that the Lord has told us.”?
Second, Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. Most companies that have taken the time to define their core values have them written somewhere. The question is, are they, as one of my clients described, “dusty posters in the conference room”, or are they living documents that are incorporated into the life of the organization?
Are your company’s core values dusty posters in the conference room or are they living documents that are incorporated into the life of your organization?It is just as important to clearly define what the values mean in terms of behaviors. That is, define what behaviors reflect the values and which ones don’t. In the chapters leading up to Exodus 24, the Lord went into great detail about what behaviors where acceptable and not acceptable and the associated consequences. Companies, teams, departments and any group need to do the same, so their core values can be related to the work they do every day.
Third, Moses read the words of the Lord to the people. He shared them again. It is not enough to tell the people once and hope they remember. It is insufficient to post them in the conference room or on the website. One telltale sign of whether a company is serious about its culture and core values is whether the core values shared repeatedly. Can you ask any employee what the core values are and get the right response?
In most companies, the answer is “no.” I worked in various strategic planning roles for a major telecommunications company. I can’t tell you what our company core values were. When I speak on this topic, I ask my audiences what their company core values are and typically fewer than 10% will know. That is because it takes effort—constant and consistent effort.
I am currently working with a client that is focusing on creating a values-centered culture. The CEO knows that this process takes commitment because the changes he is looking for won’t happen overnight. If you aren’t committed, you won’t be persistent in sharing the values, what they mean, and how they are to shape the way things get done in your organization. You must share the values if you want people to know what they are, and they must know what they are if they are expected to honor them.
That brings me to the fourth point. Core values must be honored if they are to have value. We don’t have to splash blood on people to create a covenant, but we must honor the values. There are plenty of stories in the news, for example Wells Fargo, where the behaviors of the people and the stated values where not consistent. At the time the Wells Fargo scandal broke, you could find their core values listed on their website. It said:
“We have five primary values that are based on our vision and provide the foundation for everything we do:
- People as a competitive advantage
- Ethics
- What’s right for customers
- Diversity and inclusion
- Leadership
A similar statement is there today. The company is trying to return to the core principles it was founded on. Their values are fine values. The problem is that they weren’t honored. In an attempt to make short-term sales goals, they lost their way. The result has been disastrous costing the company over $1.6 billion in penalties, settlements, and now a massive advertising campaign to move past the scandal and regain their stakeholders’ trust.
Wells Fargo is just one of many examples. This and other “sensational” stories are just the tip of the iceberg. Every day thousands upon thousands of other companies suffer from expensive, time-consuming, and energy-draining problems with customers, employees, subcontractors and vendors because they either haven’t defined core values or fail to live them. This may not always get them in trouble with the law, but the costs are nonetheless significant.
We usually don’t go running away from our core values, we drift away.How does this happen? How do these organizations go so far astray? We don’t usually go running away from our values, we drift away. One small transgression is ignored and then another, and another. Without a system in place that actively looks for violations so that corrective action can be taken, the problem continues to grow. Companies that are successful in creating values-centered cultures have built-in systems for continuous improvement. They have what is like an examination of conscience and the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where there is an intentional reflection and review of failure, followed by corrective action so that the organization learns from their mistakes and becomes better as a result.
So, what if you work for a company that doesn’t have a values-centered culture? What do you do? As a Catholic, you have a personal set of guiding principles that should be honored in all areas of your life, regardless of cost. You can trust that being a person of integrity will always be good for business.
Which brings me back to the first point, how strong is your commitment to the words and ordinances of the Lord? In celebrating the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, and at every Eucharistic celebration, we are told “This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed* for many.” We renew this covenant by partaking of the Body and Blood every week (or more often if we are fortunate enough to participate in daily Mass). What does this covenant mean to you? How does this covenant play out in your life? Will your decisions, your behaviors, and your work ethic glorify the Lord?
It is hard sometimes to live up to our part of the covenant. But God has given us everything we need. He’s told us everything we need to know. Like the disciples in the Gospel reading, when they asked, “Where do you want us to go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?” If we follow the Lord’s instructions as the disciples did and “found it just as he had told them”, we too can trust that it will be as He told us. It really is a much easier way to live.
Let us invoke the Holy Spirit to help us be covenant people and to live according to His guiding principles in all areas of our life.
May God bless you abundantly, so you may go forth and glorify the Lord by your life. Amen
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Many thanks to Fr. Stan Fortuna for his musical gifts, especially the traditional and contemporary versions of Come Holy Ghost (Come Holy Spirit) that you hear in this podcast. You can find more from Fr. Stan at http://www.francescoproductions.com/ or on Facebook.
