Distill those vaguenesses into observable behaviour

The problem with non-observable measurements.

Who was it that said that you can't manage what you can't measure? Darn clever whoever he was.
But it was said a long time ago, and it has become common knowledge. The problem for most managers is no longer that they don't know that they can't manage what they don't measure, but that they can't measure what they can't see.

The most common place where this dilemma faces organisations, is in areas such as values. A value can be as vague as: "We are a warm-hearted organisation."

The problem is not that the organisation does not know that values are really important. They might even have paid a consultant a sizeable sum of money and spent a significant amount of expensive senior management hours in brainstorming and facilitating workshop sessions to define these values. The problem is that it is very difficult to measure the warm-ness of the the hearted-ness of the organisation.

So the challenge they face here is to distil the value into observable behaviour.
The observable behaviour could be called the manifestation of the value. This manifestation might not be the same in various areas of the organisation. So when going through the process of identifying the behaviour that shows the existence of this value within the individuals that make up the organisation, it is advisable that every team goes through this exercise. This would be a better approach than simply prescribing behaviour from the top.

Ownership of Values

Maybe I should pause here for a moment, whilst on the thought of prescribing behaviour.

A value is something which is supposed to be a higher motivator, a higher driving force, than rules and regulations. Most people consider a man who lives true to his values, to be a greater man than one who is held in check merely by the force of rules and regulations. We have expressions to describe people like this: "A person of integrity; his own man; a person of truth; a solid person," and so I can go on.

This then is one of the utopian promises of a "Value Driven Organisation." If every person in a society truly lived values of honesty, respecting another's property and privacy, we would not need elaborate security systems and bookkeeping procedures aimed at preventing fraud.

The more behaviour is driven from within a person, the less there is the need to monitor or control such a person's behaviour through external measures.

The process of communicating the values, allowing employees to think about those values and then come up with their own definitions of the behaviour that would be visible manifestations of those values, goes a long way to making people think about that behaviour. Generally, the people in a certain society have a remarkably similar set of values. Chances are good that you will find that even a set of values forged by the senior leadership of an organisation, would probably resonate with most of the people in the organisation. (Assuming, that said leadership are actually considered men of value in their society. If they are viewed as a bunch of scoundrels or outcasts by most of their society, their values are likely to NOT reflect that of their society.)

Global Differences in Values

Apart from the parenthesised comment in the above paragraph, it probably should be mentioned that this will also not work in the following scenario: If you are in a global organisation, where the bulk of your senior leadership are from one nation or country, and that senior leadership forged the values of the organisation, there is a pretty good chance that some of those values will not find any resonance in some of your offices in other areas of the world. Not only that, but you will also most likely find that what you consider to be an expected set of behaviours manifesting a certain value, might be totally different to what some of your colleagues in another country might consider to be an expected way to live out that same value.

A good example of this last point comes from a little story told to me by a good Chinese friend of mine, to show the difference between the way duty and responsibility was perceived by him as a Chinese, and his perception of the American view of the same values. The tale itself is a bit beyond anything that I could put any sense of realism to, but the illustration did make the point clear.

A situation called for the death of two people. One Chinese and one American. The two people had been selected, and it was explained to both of them that their country needed them to commit suicide.

The American refused, explaining that because he had a wife and family, who needed him, he had to give up the opportunity to go down in history as a an American hero, for the sake of surviving and caring for his family. This, to him, was of greater importance than serving his country.

The Chinese accepted and explained that he could not refuse, explaining that because he had a wife and a family, he could do his family no greater service than to become a national hero. That would be his greatest responsibility, setting such an example for his family. Refusing, would dishonour his family, causing them to live in shame forthwith.

The point of the story is not to try and create an argument about whether or not either of these two are accurate in terms of likelihood, but merely the fact that it is possible that two people, driven by the same value, namely responsibility towards their family, could act in totally opposite ways, when facing exactly the same situation, due to a difference in definition in their values.

Distilling the Vagueness into Measurables

Having said that, let's now return to the concept of turning your vague but important items into measurables.

When you decide that you want to define how to measure a vague goal, such as being warm-hearted, the art of successfully doing this lies in the art of observing human behaviour. There are two ways of doing this. The first, is using your imagination to imagine what you think a warm-hearted person would behave like. The second is, to think of someone that you actually consider to be a role-model of warm-heartedness, and consider their behaviour.

The question you then ask yourself is simply this:
"What does that person do, that makes me think that he is warm-hearted?"
The following are the kind of answers you might come up with, if you were trying to describe "warm heartedness" in a manager or supervisor:

1) He smiles whenever he sees me.
2) He always has time for me.
3) He does not ignore my errors, but gently corrects me, thus helping me improve myself.

Now in this list, there are things that are still vague. What does "he always has time for me?" mean?

You could possibly think about this and realize that it means:
1) He doesn't just say "I'm too busy." If possible, he helps me whenever I approach him. If he does not have time, he takes a moment to schedule time to meet with me when it would suit both of us.

And what does "gently corrects me," mean?

Maybe you will say that it means:
1) He doesn't make any derogatory comments when noticing me making a mistake.
2) He points out the correct way of doing it, with words that encourages my faith in myself that I can do it correctly.
3) He concludes with a word of praise.


You now have a revised list:
1) He smiles whenever he sees me.
2) He either deals with any issues I raise immediately or schedules time to deal with them.
3) He doesn't make derogatory comments when I make a mistake or behave incorrectly.
4) He teaches and encourages correct behaviour, and doesn't ignore incorrect behaviour.
5) He finds good behaviour and praises it.

Now you have a list of things that you can measure.

Use a 360 Degree Review

One of the best ways now to measure this, is using a 360 Degree Review.
You create a short questionnaire and assign scores to every question. Then get peers, superiors and subordinates to rate people based on this questionnaire, and let the person rate himself also.

So your questionnaire could be something like this:

1) Does Joe smile when he sees people?
Always / Mostly / Seldom / Never / I don't know

2) Does Joe make time to deal with issues brought to him?
Always / Mostly / Seldom / Never / I don't know

3) Does Joe ignore incorrect behaviour?
Never / Seldom / Mostly / Always / I don't know

4) Does Joe make derogatory comments when he sees wrong behaviour?
Never / Seldom / Mostly / Always / I don't know

5) Does Joe teach and encourage correct behaviour?
Always / Mostly / Seldom / Never / I don't know

6) Does Joe find and praise correct behaviour?
Always / Mostly / Seldom / Never / I don't know

You can now simply assign a 1, 2, 3 and 4 to each answer, and consider "I don't know" to be a blank.
Calculate the average score, remembering to simply leave the blanks from your calculation. So if there was one blank, you will divide by 5, and not 6, to get your average.

The maximum score anyone can get is 4, the minimum is 1. in between there somewhere is the target for warm-heartedness that you want to set for your yourself, your team, your department or maybe your organisation.

Now you might say that this will encourage "fake" or hypocritical behaviour. People who actually are totally heartless, are suddenly going to start acting warm hearted, but it's going to be shallow and empty.

Some Answers to Objections

I have two things to say about that.

Firstly, if they can act well enough to make everyone around them believe that they are truly warm-hearted, well, then it probably wouldn't bother anyone. Everyone are likely to believe that they are truly warm-hearted - and they might just, over time, start believing it about themselves.

You cannot change a man's heart. But you can at least get him to behave in a way that reflects your organisation's heart, whilst he is representing your organisation.

Secondly, no-one can really fake it for too long. If someone is really a block of ice, they can only act warm for so long before the cracks will show and their true character will come out. If you are serious about going down the value path, you would do well to also teach your employees about integrity and living true to themselves.

As a Christian, I have watched people go through amazing transformations, having their entire value-systems changed overnight, and I've seen the new values stand the test of time. So if you really want people to change from the inside out, I suggest you start by praying for them.

Then you might also ask whether it is not unfair. Could you penalise someone by measuring their performance on something that they essentially cannot change? For instance, if I am by nature hard-hearted and void of all emotion, is it fair for you to identify this through a set of measures, and penalise me for this? The penalisation could be merely the emotional impact of experiencing failure, or it could even be linked to my career success?

My answer to this is that if your organisational values are right values (and the philosophical debate that could ensue from trying to define "right" is way outside the scope of this article) and your entire organisation subscribes to these values, then the damage that can be done by allowing people to simply trash these values, is potentially as dangerous as allowing an accountant to be negligent in his accounting, a relationship manager to blatantly aggravate customers, or a security officer to leave your IT infra-structure insecure.

The Critical Nature of Values

I am, in fact, of the opinion that it is sometimes easier to repair the damage done by failure in the hard skills - e.g. an accountant submitting an erroneous tax return - than the soft skills - e.g. values. Your values reflect the values of your society. A society will forgive an organisation they like, for making all sorts of mistakes. But if your organisation is forever treading on the toes of their society's values, they will simply walk away from you, and support someone else. You will quietly starve to death.