Lynda Gratton: How do you restore values to work?

Values are at the heart of what we do. We, as humans, are capable of willfully adopting, embracing and living according to a set of values - living according to these values results in habits that exemplify the underlying values.

We have options/choices. By assessing these choices and their potential consequences we make choices - and once we have made these choices, we have to accept the consequences.

In our world today, there seems to be a crisis - the consequences of decisions made over the past decades have resulted in unpalatable consequences. While we are taking remedial actions (or trying to do so), we should also be taking a more fundamental look at what lies behind/underneath it all - possibly a lack of shared values? In an age where individual rights have become incredibly important (and for not one moment do I believe they should be ignored/smoothed over), it may be that we have lost sight of the broader systemic/societal values/expectations, resulting in an unbalanced system that has become somewhat dysfunctional.

Balancing both sets of rights is therefore the goal - with values one of the key building blocks used in decision-making and action. Given that values are a key building block, outcomes of our habits/behaviours should be measured against these key areas, along with a clear view (and report back) on our performance, as well as the consequences of non-compliance / non-conformance / underperformance.

While I do agree that business schools should place more emphasis on values and ethics, surely we, as a broader society should be exposing our children to values and ethics from an early age - and not leave it to the educators. The greatest challenge therefore is that the parent (and society at large) of today needs to take a fresh look at its value set, as well as its habits. The change therefore has to start with each one of us - own up and show up, should be the way forward. In addition, we need to realise that the system will retaliate if what we do (our habits) is not in line with the requirements - and we should therefore prepared to face the consequences.

Increasingly the societal system and its functioning is being challenged through activists (and anarchists for that matter) who are using technology to make their dissatisfaction evident - these lone (initially at least) voices, quickly go to crowd-sourcing if the issue is pervasive enough.

Although the temptation is to try and shut down these activist actions, the powers that be should possibly rather tap into this system, using it as an early warning system that highlights areas of concern, calling for corrective action - in a more proactive manner. In business the term "the customer is always right" is often used. If the customer is dissatisfied, business (should) jump to address the dissatisfaction - so why actively embrace this principle and tap into the voice of the activist and move quickly to address the underlying issues - suppressing the voice of the activist is like putting a plastering over a crackand hoping the underlying problem will go await...

In sum, an interesting clip, which (as you can see) has led to a number of areas of discussion. And I am sure you, the reader could come up with many and varied views on the clip and my thoughts above.

I look forward to hearing your views