I referred in an earlier post about how values are key to online communities. It’s about being social, not about social media.
I read this piece in LBS’ newsletter about Saatchi & Saatchi’s internal approach to values. There are some nice themes in it:
A) The importance of purpose – it’s really important to have a purpose that matters to people and to keep communicating relative to that purpose at all times ( and yes ours is “How do we stop doing dumb things to our customers and our people?”)
B) If the purpose isn’t relevant to some people, they shouldn’t be there
C) The social, as in societal, aspect of work is important to people and you can give it room to breathe at work.
It reminded me of the performance system of one of my previous businesses where we ran an 20/80 scheme. You could take up to 20% of your week to achieve your out of work objectives, as long as you got your work done. You had to share those objectives in advance. Which made it overt and ok. And helped colleague communication. You got beaten up if you didn’t achieve them – people loved that. You didn’t have to mention the in-work objectives they set themselves – they were always motivated enough to do that.
I also like their phrase “Lovebrands” for firms like Amazon, Google and Southwest where people really feel part of it ( you can download “100 things you can learn from…. ” for each of these companies from our library ). Virgin also gets a mention. I’m less sure about that one. The brand is up there, but the subbrands are not. At an event recently people were asked to describe Virgin if it were a car: Alfa Romeo – beautiful when it works.
Anyway, have a read, its only 2 minutes. What is your company’s purpose and do you relate to it?
