Colin (00:01)

Hi and welcome to The Growth System, the podcast that looks at B2B growth through a systems thinking lens. I'm Colin Shakespeare.

Chris (00:08)

I'm Chris Bayliss.

Colin (00:10)

And today we're onto the third episode of our new season where we kind of work our way through the 12 dimensions of our growth team operating system that we run for our clients and for ourselves here at RevSpace and giving you a bit of a systems thinking perspective on that. Now, last week we went through purpose. This week we're going to talk about values. So Chris.

Let's start off by actually defining what we mean by values in this context.

Chris (00:45)

Sure. So what we're really talking about here is the of core values of the organization. So you might kind of describe those as the sort of ethics and principles that kind of govern the company's decision making process. But I think...

to kind of bring it into sort of the real life domain. Values are so often those things that get put on a poster, put in an orientation onboarding presentation that are maybe on the wall somewhere.

but don't really pay a lot of, you know, no one really pays a lot of attention to. So what we're going to discuss today, I think, is how to make values meaningful in the context of delivering as a growth team. And that's because, you know, these core values of the organization so often are intended rather than actual, but what they...

do is serve as kind of the foundation for company culture, and the behaviors expected by the workforce. And I think kind of leaning into that word expected. But whilst there is so often a sort of reality to intention gap between values, and people's lived experience of the business, they are the top factor for kind of driving employee satisfaction, because

Organizations with great culture have happy employees that tend to stick around a long time. And values, to my mind at least, are one of the big shaping ideas behind how you build company culture. Now, you build company culture by acting on those values and bringing them to life. And we'll discuss that in some detail as we get into the episode, no doubt. But that's really what we're talking about is those kind of principles, I guess, to live by that the organizations like to kind of instill into their overall sort of vision.

mission values stack. And I guess to sort of bring it to life a little more, you know, you, we often lean, even though this is a B2B podcast into the B2C domain. And I think one organization that we often mention because it's got, you know, clear mission, clear vision and clear values is Starbucks. And they champion four values, inclusion, sustainability, community and training and development.

And I think that as always with Starbucks, it's quite interesting as to why they've picked those because, know, they very clearly and they say this, and I believe they act this not that I've ever worked for Starbucks, but, you know, they really treat those values as guiding principles throughout business strategy. And therefore, they make investment decisions, they make hiring decisions, they make sort of

professional development decisions based on adherence to that stack of values. And I think that's a really, really important point to make is that, Starbucks is someone that probably does have quite a reality to intention gap, if you like, in terms of what their values are.

Colin (03:57)

Yeah, Starbucks is a really interesting example that I think we keep coming back to and we'll probably come back to again. I guess we should dive into, now that we've sort of defined what we mean by value specifically in this context. And I guess it's interesting what you mentioned about Starbucks there, how the strategy flows from the values sort of in that order. And I think that's going to be quite relevant to what we talk about here.

It'd good to go into what role values play specifically in the growth team operating system.

Chris (04:33)

Yeah, I mean, we'll definitely get into the into the weeds in terms of the role of values. But ultimately, for me, values shape the way that we act and think and make decisions. And therefore, they're hugely important to the attainment of organisational purposes we were talking about next week, because they ultimately shape the way that the human beings in our organisation deliver on the strategy that we that we set. We're to talk strategy next week. But, you know, the

In the growth team operating system, it's a simple canvas that kind of has these kind of guiding principles. And really within the growth team operating system, we just need the values to be codified. So we specify the values that we aspire to have within our organization. But we also recognize within the kind of great team operating system dimension of values that our culture.

is shaped by the real values that we have as the organization. So culture, and I don't want to get too much into culture because it's a whole big topic and it's, and actually to be fair, not one that I feel like I'm a, you know, a particular expert on, but culture is an immersion property of the systems that we build. So you can't dictate what a culture is going to be a culture. I...

I say I'm not much of an expert on culture. I actually wrote my thesis on how culture impacts consumer behavior. But one of the things that always stuck with me from that very, very long time ago, writing that great many words was just this lovely, simple definition of culture. that culture is the way that we do things around here. And I think that's a really, really nice way of looking at the world. And really, it's the way that we look at values through the lens of the of the growth team operating system, because

The way that we do things around here, the way that we deliver on strategy is dictated in a big way between what our actual values are. And therefore the second part, rather than just codifying values within the Great Team Operating System, is that we need to recognize this kind of reality to aspiration gap that I mentioned a couple of times and have structures in place to manage it. And...

Colin (06:43)

So we don't deny

that it exists. We actually kind of work with that reality.

Chris (06:48)

100 %

Yeah, exactly. need to, you know, this is where and we'll talk about strategy in action versus strategy on paper, no doubt next week, but, but, you know, values are not worth the paper they're written on. If all you do is stick them on a wall and hope that people have them, you need to have active practices in place that kind of get your

real culture, the real lived values, the real lived experience sort of viewed through those values of your team to be as close to what your intended structure is for those values. Now, how do you do that? think that's, I guess, what we'll dig into a bit over the next 40 minutes or so. But at RevSpace, we run something called the Ultramarial Operating System. It's

based on a book called Traction, it's a set of fairly basic principles for running an org. There is nothing wildly clever about it, but we quite like it in some ways because it isn't wildly clever. It's sort of a simple operating principle. Now, it also interestingly has a fairly militant view on values. And it is, dare I say, and an apology to our American audience, but quite an Americanized view on people.

that they say that you should hire, fire and reward on values. And they actually have this thing within the entrepreneurial operating system called, I think it's called something like the people analyzer, where it's just like a simple chart and it's like tick, tick, tick. They have those, they live those values cross, they don't live those values too many crosses and you're out. Now, whether you would like.

Colin (08:27)

we've had the uncomfortable

situation of having to go through this process.

Chris (08:34)

Yeah, well, well, maybe we can we can start now. But but, know, whilst in Europe, even if we wanted to fire people just based on values, we can't, you know, it's not legally permitted. So, you know, it is it is an ideal if nothing else. But but actually, I think there is a really coherent school of thought to say

Colin (08:40)

shouldn't have said anything.

Chris (09:02)

you should be baking values into your hiring process and your reward and recognition process because employee happiness and cultural fit are kind of inextricably linked. So if you bake cultural fit in through the lens of values into your hiring process, then you're going to have happier, more productive people. And that can only be a good thing.

And I think that you proactively manage the gap by kind of baking the behaviors that you want to see into your reward and recognition structure.

that you kind of use that as a mechanism for reinforcing core values, the ones that are really key to your organization. So yeah, in a nutshell, we need to have good values. We need to have arrived at those in a sensible way, and they need to be arrived at in a way that will shape the behaviors that we want to see. And then we need to have a structure in place for managing them. And in a nutshell, that is the view of values through the growth team operating system lens. But I think what we'll hopefully do now is kind of

jump into some of the theory behind why that's important.

Colin (10:10)

It's actually interesting the contrast between something like EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system and its view of values, which is not necessarily sort of divergent from our own, but as you would expect from us, the growth team operating system sees values, I guess, through a deeper systems lens and the importance of values to the growth team,

Chris (10:36)

Yeah, absolutely.

Colin (10:40)

as I guess is this after purpose really is a sort of deep structuring principle that comes, as I say, that comes before strategy.

Chris (10:51)

Yeah, that's, I mean, that's exactly it. I mean, we talked about deep structure, didn't we last last week when we were talking about purpose and values really sit alongside purpose to my mind, at that sort of deep structure level within the organization. So that they kind of create a sort of beneath the surface anchor to day to day actions and decision making.

and they sort of function as as a really a guide when, you you might not have a formal process, you might not have explicit rules, you know, you don't have those kind of codified guardrails of what we do about this particular thing. They create a sort of instinctive response, I guess, to situations that don't have that kind of precedent to follow, I guess. And because of that, you know, values operate.

quietly in the background, that they kind of shape your view of what's possible and what's permissible and you know they should hopefully guide your team on how they treat each other, how they treat themselves, how they interpret client demands, you know how they resolve ethical dilemmas and you know they should create a kind of constancy, a kind of stability within the organization that

that transcends small ripples, big waves even in the ocean because you have this sort of set of guiding principles that are embedded beneath the surface in the orc. And I guess the way that they get embedded at this deep structure level is through something else that we talked about. think purpose and values are really related concepts in my mind, certainly when it comes to the way that they shape systems.

Colin (12:41)

And I guess in the way

that they're misinterpreted sometimes as well as being a piece of marketing copy that talks about what a good person you are. that's not.

Chris (12:44)

Yeah.

Colin (12:52)

could of course be part of your values and purpose.

Chris (12:55)

we have we talked about, you know, purpose being confused with kind of CSR last week. And I think that it's not quite the same thing. But I think values are so often the poster on the wall, they are the external virtue signaling that isn't the lived experience of the people inside the building. And I

think that that obviously is a huge issue in many organizations. But the reason it's a huge issue is probably because they haven't really thought about the values in the first place. They've just gone for some sort of, you know, me too, you know, we're always, you know, we're going to be, you know, we're going to our values going to be trust and honesty and, you know, whatever. And great, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. But is that really the value of your organization? And is that really going to meaningfully shape the way that your employees go about their business day to day?

Because when you do get it right and you do get it into that deep structure level, then it becomes part of the mental model of the people within the organization. And it kind of creates a set of internalized assumptions about how the world works through the lens of your org. And they sort of bake those deep structuring principles into a sort of

I don't know, a kind of implicit knowledge of what is right, what is wrong, what is desirable, what is undesirable, what is possible within the org. And they kind of create these self reinforcing cycles, I guess, because when you get lots of individuals in the org acting consistently, you know, and in line with the organization's values, they all understand what they are.

then most likely if you've got those values right in the first place you're going to see positive results so you're going to see stronger internal cohesion but you're probably also going to see stronger you know external sort of validation of what's right you're going to create this kind of unified view of who you are that's just going to seep from the pores of everybody that's in the org because they're all kind of acting in the same way.

And it means that we kind of get a positive reinforcing loop to kind of use the system's term from this sort of value aligned behavior. But it's also, dare I say, the inverse is also possible. Because if we get

Colin (15:26)

I think you're going to come

on to something that I've experienced here myself, that sort of cognitive dissonance where you've read the values statement, you've made sure that in your interview, you've shown how that you live up to those values and try to really believe it. And then you kind of get in and you get down in the weeds and you see leaders and your colleagues sort of behaving in ways that are sort of...

Chris (15:30)

We've all experienced this, right?

Colin (15:52)

at times directly contrary to those values that apparently were so important when you were hired. And I think when you experience that, tend to get, there's at least a sort of unproductive tension or at the very minimum, a certain cynicism that develops. And I think obviously that's weakening the organization's kind of cultural coherence there really. Is that what you were going to say? Sorry, I interrupted you.

Chris (16:19)

Absolutely. I mean, it is the, know, very simply, if the values that we state, and try to embed into the mental model of our employees doesn't meet the behaviors, predominantly of leadership and have kind of like operational demands, and we start getting this clash between

what's on the poster on the wall and what the reality of the organization is, you know, that's how you, that's how you create bad culture because what you are saying there, you're implicitly saying is we don't do what we say we'll do.

you know, we are a dishonest organization because if we say that, you know, we value our employees and then we make you work 80 hours a week and we, you know, beat you over the head with something if you lose a deal, then we are not doing what we said we would do. We are not behaving with integrity and we're not behaving with honesty as an organization. And as you said, that creates kind of cynicism. It creates tension and it means that the culture starts to break down because no one believes that it's true. So they then just start creating their own.

their own view of the world, they adapt their mental models, and then you get this kind of cultural divergence. So it works there. The mental model works in the opposite way, I guess is the point. So, you know, do what you say you'll do is probably the moral of the story there. And I think that because

values reside at this sort deep structure level as well. The other point, I guess, with the mental model is that they're not easily changed by kind of an edict. You know, just because you change the poster doesn't mean the mental model is going to change. And therefore,

attempts to impose new values because you've paid some brand consultancy to, you know, do a new mission, vision, value statement for you. And then you launch it in all hands. And then suddenly you think that's our values as an organization. Well, of course it's not because at a deep structure level, you have these embedded mental models and it takes a long time to, to, to really move away from what, just to make that cultural shift to kind of change the behavior pattern.

So it's, yeah, the deep structuring principles are great because they're there and they sound wonderful when we talk about them on a podcast. But, but if you've built the wrong deep structure or more actually more accurately, you've let it emerge from what you've actually done and the lived experience of the employee. You've also got hell of a job to change it.

Colin (18:57)

Yeah, and I think attempts to kind of take some sort of totalitarian stance where you change the values by edict on a sort of all hands or sort of annual meeting is a fundamental misunderstanding of what values actually are, like what we're talking about here. So I guess there's kind of three types of value happening all at once then. We've got, I guess, intended, we could euphemistically call some of the values like what we're actually

but we actually want the values to be emergent values, which I guess are the reality. And I suppose, and I don't know if we'll get, I'd like to talk about this more. I don't know if we'll get time on this, on this episode, but sort of individual values, people bring their own individual values to the role that are maybe not the same as the intended or emergent values as well.

Chris (19:52)

Yeah, I think that's a really interesting one because, you know, I think there's two things going on with kind of individual values, which is they're really important. They're important to all of us. We all have our own value system as human beings. And it's not the role of the organization to change that, but it is the role of the organization, as we were kind of talking about briefly earlier, to make sure that they're identifying people who are naturally a good cultural fit.

And when you don't have that, or even when you do have that, you know, positive or negative view, you need to recognise that the sort of individual value system, you know, even within the kind of, it's in the sort of systems view, I guess, of the world, is that you kind of have this sort of butterfly effect piece that can very easily go on, you know, small local actions can scale up to big consequences.

And when we look at things like kind of organisational reputation or kind of its perceived identity in the world, then employees can have a huge impact on that because, you know, there is that old, the old saying, you know, you can't change your first impression or whatever it is, you know, your employees are creating those first impressions everywhere at an individual level. And, you know, if you've got an employee that's constantly championing kind of honesty in supply and the negotiations,

know, they will create a great first impression, presumably, as long as that's what you want to be perceived as, presumably, but they'll also start driving and prompting the behavior of others, so you kind of get this kind of network effect, you know, the sheep effect, maybe you might call it less generously, but, you know, and over time these kind of micro level choices kind of result in macro level shifts in identity, positively and negatively.

and these behaviors, as they kind of interact and as they grow kinds of arms and legs and you get this sort of network effect, then they also create new cultural norms or they have the potential to create new cultural norms. So this is really where emergence comes from within the system effect because are stated on the poster on the wall values. If your individuals

in the organization either don't get them, haven't internalized them, they've not become part of their mental model, or they just simply don't believe that they're true because you're not acting in a way that's kind of, not acting with kind of integrity and living those values yourself as an organization, then they will start having these making micro level choices and their own individual value systems will start dictating what they do.

and positively and negatively that can kind of create the network effect that makes your culture divergent and that's the thing to be aware of is that just because you put on the wall you really need to think about the behaviours of the individual.

Colin (22:46)

I guess we could think, and sorry, I always do this and go into some social scientific bit, but I think if we think how culture and values work at a macro, like societal level, culture and values doesn't come about from like what the government see they should be or a law that they created, you know, it comes about through this sort of, it's an emergent property essentially. And I guess if if a company,

If the people within an organization whose behaviors are values induced and are living the values, then that's contagious. It propagates through informal networks and role modeling. That really is much more important than written policies, especially if that's kind of contradicted to the actual lived experience. That's how to sort of...

the real way the values are sort of embedded in the organization. It's somewhat different from putting some bullet points on a poster.

Chris (23:54)

Yeah, exactly. It's kind of coming back to that point on culture. It's the way we do things around here, right? You know, that's and the individuals are the ones doing the things around here. So, you know, it becomes emergent by default and it overrides anything that could be written down.

Colin (24:12)

So something that we've really got thinking about when researching for this episode, and I think we've had this in our own professional experience, I times of stress and pressure is really where you see the true colours of an organisation. So how do we build that into the operating system? Because values is absolutely key to this.

Chris (24:34)

Absolutely. mean, isn't that where, you know, people show their true colors is when they're under stress. You know, that's true in real personal life. It's true in business life. And when you're in smooth waters, you know, the ship is sailing along and you know, it's all going fine. Then values are unchallenged.

they are, I was hesitant to say unimportant, they're obviously important, but they're less tested, I would say. And everyone can probably agree that having a value of respect or integrity or whatever someone's put on the poster is all very good. But the true test arises when you get

this sort of divergence behavior when you get the sort of, you know, stress conditions that you start to see contradictions, potentially between, you know, what the demands of whatever the external pressure is, and what the poster says to carry on using that kind of, you know, metaphor. So, you know, where you have a situation where the values and the external reality collide, then

that is your test point. know, that is where we then think about emergence as being having high potential, know, stress is a high leverage point in the system for you to prove that your values weren't true.

it's how you kind of manage that tension as an organization that really speaks volumes in terms of how serious you are about your values. So if you've got a really obvious example, it's like you then you've

closed a load of business and like you've had like absolutely smashed it out the park in you know in in Q1 in January whatever and now you know the delivery team whoever your you know whatever your business is has suddenly got you know twice as much work to do as they can as they can realistically do. What do you do then? Well it depends on your values doesn't it but if you've got a value around kind of employee well-being then

Are you going to sacrifice that employee well-being? Are you going to force people to kind of confront the real meaning of the values? Are they going to need to weigh that up? And I think that that sort of...

tension that you then feel between what you want to be as an organization or what you thought you wanted to be and what you actually are come to the surface and how you then act is really really important. Now that doesn't necessarily mean you have to turn the work away or you have to go hire in a load of people to make it unprofitable just to do the right thing in inverted commas, but it is the point where you need to really coherently communicate.

to sure that you sort of remove the cultural dissonance. Because, you know, at these kind of break points, these inflection points, culturally speaking, then you've just got such a high potential to be perceived as being hypocritical as an organization. You know, if you sort of preach the values, but don't live the values, then employees immediately spot the mismatch.

And they kind of tear at the fabric of the organization because they move you away from that deep structuring principle that you were trying to embed in the org to help people make the right decisions because you don't make the right decisions. So that's the really, really important thing is that there is this tension always in the organization between the actions of the leadership team and the actions of the individuals, contributors within the organization. And I think that's such an important principle when managing values.

My advice for what it's worth is that the use of the formal values themselves is actually the tool that you need to use to manage that very situation. So we always have breakpoints in an organization. There are always times where there are times of stress because of the workload is high.

Yeah, this was actually something that we recognized in our own business is that we have this we have a value of flexibility. You know, we, we have always had lower than average working weeks in terms of hours, you know, RTM only work a 35 hour week only, but we pay them full time money for that. And we say, do what you like with your day as long as you're doing the right thing by the customer. So if you want to go to the gym at 11 o'clock in the morning,

you've got a meeting with someone in the US at eight o'clock at night or you just want to go to the gym because you're smashing through the work and whatever. I don't care. We don't care as an organization. We want you to be happy. We want you to invest in your whole self. want you to, if you've woken up and you're just full of rage and you're having a bad day because you haven't been to the gym for a couple of days and you just need to go do something, using a lot of gym example there, probably channeling my own inner self. But ultimately, I like it.

Colin (29:53)

Need to get back to the gym, are you Chris?

Chris (29:57)

to, yeah, I'm the person with the spoken up with the yeah. But, but ultimately, I don't mind if you do that. But then what we actually observed over time, and this is where, you know, we will talk about kind of the adaptive nature of values, I think I suspect in a little bit, is that actually that value wasn't quite right. What we meant by that value was, we wanted flexibility both ways. You know, we'll give it to you.

But we really expect that back in return. So, you know, we actually did update our values and kind of relaunch them. And we were those people in the all hands saying that this is the new thing. But I'd like to think and I hear when we interview new people, how people pipe up and talk about our values. So I think that we do personally, you know, being very self-concerned, literally a decent job here. But, know, we had created a miss expectation by having the wrong values and

just by flexing that to say, you know, short-term pain is sometimes necessary, and therefore it's okay for us to ask quite a lot of you sometimes, long-term pain is never acceptable and we will never let that happen. So, you know, if we're to have a horrible month, you know, well, you know, next month we'll make it up to you, or actually the very fact that, you know, you've been living perhaps in a way that's, you know, really holistic and really kind of whole self-focused for, you know, the year leading up to this little inflection point.

That's fine. We're working on this, we're in this together, but we'll never let that pain continue. And as long as you have that sort of inevitability and that sort of attitude to work baked into your value stack, you have a tool with which to manage those situations. And don't be afraid to adapt the tools as long as you're walking the talk, so to speak.

Colin (31:51)

Yeah, guess something that I thought was interesting in researching for this episode was taking a systems thinking view of this difference between the declared values and the lived values that we sort of see in practice. And I guess it was interesting to think of that as a sort of coupled system. And this is going to take us back to our old friend alignment.

So if this coupled system aligns, then the cultural system gains momentum and coherence. And conversely, if they diverge, then internal friction, cynicism, disempowerment, a sort of vicious cycle emerges. I guess that's all the sort of key reason for these sort values being a key part of growth team operating systems. So as you say, it's all about our old friend alignment.

Chris (32:20)

you

Exactly, it's about managing the gap.

Colin (32:48)

Everyone can mark that off in their growth system,

bike bingo card.

Chris (32:53)

Yeah, exactly. We had to have to get it into every episode. It's a legal contractual requirement. But yeah, ultimately, that's that is exactly that, you the gap between formal and lived values, the, you know, the coupled system, as you called it, which I think is absolutely a great way of looking at it. Then, yeah.

Colin (32:58)

Hahaha

Chris (33:15)

The more tightly coupled the formal and the lived values are, the greater alignment you have, the less cynicism you have, the more empowerment you have of your organization and other people in your organization to make great decisions. So the performance of the growth team is contingent on maintaining strong alignment. And I think that's the really key point here as we come into the last third of the episode.

Colin (33:47)

guess something that's often sort of under-emphasized is that values aren't just a sort of static dogma. You it's not the 10 commandments that's going to set up there for thousands of years, and we all have to live by them. They evolve through continuous feedback loops and connect internal behaviors with external signals like client satisfaction or market shifts or new hires even who

crucially who bring in different perspectives. And obviously, when certain values can clearly drive success, those values will tend to become more entrenched, especially get woven into recruiting pitches and onboarding materials and leadership narratives. But conversely, a big scandal or an ethical breach will

ultimately, or perhaps some of the kind of stress situations and those kind of moments will tend to trigger a rebalancing of values, or they should do anyway. But the shock can become a negative feedback. Sort of highlighting a pattern that can't be sustained. I think we kind of touched on examples where that might happen.

Chris (35:08)

Yeah, I like to we've kind of seen it ourselves. And I think, you know, the point is, say is that values, you know, can't be static. They can't change every two minutes, because you have to embed them into a deep structured principle in the mental model, as we kind of started off on, but they should adapt through kind of iterative loops, I guess. And feedback is obviously the lifeblood, you know, the fuel of that iteration. Because, you know, when something goes wrong,

and we can track that back to values or not having lived our values or people having misunderstood those values, that's a time that we can go through that adaptation. We can recenter, can update, we can discuss. And I think that evolution is fine. And I think that you see that as well through the lens of organisational growth. Often a company will start out almost...

as an, you without organisational values, it will start out with personal values. It will be the individual value system of the founder or founders. But as the organisation scales, and as you say, you know, you get new people coming in, they sort of, you know, refresh the pool, they start creating emergent culture, emergent kind of values, emergent behaviours, then you kind of get the

there is a requirement for the value system of the organization to evolve, to incorporate that kind of, you know, new blood that's come into the org. Equally, you you kind of can take those fresh perspectives, but also, you know, you need to sometimes during the periods of organizational growth actually not adapt, you know, when you've got like an inflection point, like a rapid growth curve, then actually sometimes what you really need to do is avoid

being thrown into a state of flux and you need to actually have that sort of strong guiding principle, you you need to put the guardrails up in the sort of bowling lane to make sure that everyone gets along to the end without falling off. And I think that that's kind of, is knowing when to evolve and when not to evolve and, you know, adapting values in step with organizational change.

is important, you know, we shouldn't let them stagnate, know, they say they're not a sort of dogma to be to be, you know, chiseled onto a wooden, you know, onto a sort of stone tablet. But, but equally, we've got to make sure that we kind of have a culturally robust organization that that, you know, weathers the storms while still adapting to external environments. And, you know, for me, feedback is the key to kind of managing that is kind of recognizing and acting on the dynamic nature of the values. But, but, you know,

embedding them needs to be the first principle, you know, it needs to be the active role within the organ. When we think about doing that.

I know, some people talk about like the DNA of the organization, right? You know, I think there's a, and it's something I've always kind of thought that as a sort of a byword for, for, for kind of a culture for sort of the, you know, for the way we do things around here.

Colin (38:10)

Give us a...

or arguably for deep structure. There's maybe a wider way of putting it. But yeah, I mean, that's a question I was coming on to actually. So like we've talked about this kind of embracing this sort of difference between the emergent and sort of intended values, but how do we actually sort of embed our values into that deep structure is more of a kind of how question. like, let's sort of look at that through a systems lens.

Chris (38:23)

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, and I think ultimately it's about recognising that if you're baking the values into a system, that a system has many elements and many interconnections between those elements that are bound by a common purpose, you know, that's the definition of a system. So we go back to last week and the other deep structuring principle of purpose, you know, that's there sat alongside it, and we need to recognise that.

What we need to really ensure we do is, think one of the first things is just the good old leading by example. Particularly leadership teams in large organizations can be very remote. They appear on the all hands, they appear on a stage, they are sort of mythical creatures, but most people's contact with leadership within the organization is in the mid-level. And therefore I think that kind of mid-level managers have a sort of multiplier effect.

because they are the pinch in the pipe very often. They're the sort of point where you go from the sort of sunlit uplands of the sort of C-suite into the reality of getting work done. And it tends to be, if you want to use a less generous phrase, it's where the poop has rolled downhill to most of the time. So if they are doing, if they are acting in the right way, they're sort of translating.

Colin (40:05)

Nice.

Chris (40:11)

values into actions, if they're, you know, personally modeling the values in an authentic way, if they're kind of displaying empathy, then that's going to cascade through the team, it's going to shape the day to day activities and attitudes of the individuals that are actually the bulk of the organization. So I think that, you know, that sort of cascading through leadership and really just walking the talk.

particularly in that most visible area in the middle of the org, you know, the most senior person that most people interact with day to day is probably their sort of, you know, whatever departmental head, you know, they're the people that really are the ones that carry the can day to day for embedding that but also, I think you can build certain kind of practices into the day to day.

you know, lots of people run like operational retrospectives. It's something that we, you know, we're a big fan of in, in rev space, because you understand what went right and what went wrong, what you can learn from it. But actually, you know, if you thought about things like value alignment within the operational retrospective, did we act in the way we wanted to act? You know, not some sort of like, you know, CSR driven, like, was it all lovely? It just, you know, actually, as we went through making decisions,

did we do, were we proud of the way that we acted there? Did we do the things that in the way that we wanted to do them that we find important as an organization? If we didn't, why not? What drove that? Why did we stray from the path? Baking that into a practice through the org really underlines the fact that values are important and that values-based lessons are valuable to the organization. I think that

you can start putting measures in place that really shine a light on those things and don't risk, know. And I think also when you do that, they have a natural embedding process because values are a difficult thing. You know, you can go through a values workshop, know, speaking as someone that, you know, is leading a business and you can define them. And then I say myself, I hold my hands up and, know, sometimes the next day, if you've kind of gone through that piece of work and we look at our values every quarter, just as part of our entrepreneurial operating system, it's kind of part of the practice.

And, you if you asked me the day before some court release, I'm not sure I can actually verbatim read out the, you know, I know what the values are, but the sort of like what the substantiating text is. But, but I think that getting that into the day to day and really just doing the reps on reminding people what those values are, and by making them relevant, I think that's really, really key. I think the final thing as well is kind of going back to sort of a systems view of the world is that,

your infrastructure of your org needs to align with your values. If you value collaboration, but you've got rubbish collaboration tools as a really simplistic example, you're not walking the talk. So I think your process is, if like us, you say you're all about flexibility and I don't mind if you go to the gym at 11 o'clock in the morning, but you have no process for making that real.

You know, you don't have a process whereby you put a block in your diary and everyone's cool with that, or you don't have a process by which they can evaluate if that's a reasonable block as an employee to use, you haven't put the sort of structure in place to implement, then your infrastructure is not aligned with your, you know, your stated values. And I think that, you know, organizations really need to kind of reflect on how they can make their core values come to life in their processes and their tools and the workflows that they use day to day.

Colin (43:56)

Such a rich topic this Chris, isn't it? wish we kind of, I think there's a few areas that we're probably not going to have time to go into today. It's really interesting thinking about how values in reality become baked in this convergence of structure and rituals and leadership behavior and everyday processes and how individuals contribute to this in a more of a of bottom up.

Chris (44:07)

No.

Colin (44:24)

process than a top-down process, which is typically how it's seen. I guess as we said earlier,

Chris (44:29)

Yeah. So maybe we should do some

a little bit of summing up then and I think maybe we can come back to the values topic, you know, in another series. As you say, it's been a really interesting conversation today and I think the research has been interesting and I suspect there's a fair bit more we could say today.

Colin (44:48)

Yeah, especially on the, I think on the people front as well, like having a lot of it's going to come down to making sure that you have the right people in place in the first place and how we kind of, how we manage that. And we touched on that with EOS, but it'd good to give the sort of growth team operating system take on that. And that's something that I think potentially merits an episode in itself and maybe how...

Chris (45:07)

and

Colin (45:14)

values, living your values as a market differentiator would be an interesting topic in itself. But I guess we should probably sort of sum up where we are today. What I found really interesting was this idea. It was the same with the purpose episode, this idea of values as like the hidden architecture, the deep structure. I if he said something about the

the load bearing beams that keep the organization upright under strain. And I guess it's a sort of strength of the values are sort of tested when we have these sort of inflection points and points of stress. So they still need to be sort of flexible enough to adapt and sort of guide what I guess what employees notice, how they behave, how they interpret success or failure, or indeed what success looks like.

And I think there's a tendency to think of values as being soft or secondary or superficial, I guess. But actually,

The identity of a company really is an emergent property that's shaped by values, by the lived values. And I think that's really important to remember. And when they actually align with genuine practice, then they generate this trust and unity and the capacity to adapt. obviously the converse is true. When the values are superficial, then they breed disillusionment and drift and cynicism.

And think that's something that we've experienced both sides of this, to be honest.

Chris (46:47)

Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. I, you know, I think kind of try to paint that picture. I sometimes think that, you when you go like 10 pin bowling with your kids and they have those bumpers that pop up on either side of the lane. And I think that you could think about one side as purpose and the other side as values. know, they are sort of, you know, as when we as adults and we don't get the benefit of those, you know, they are the invisible hands that should guide, you know, guide the bowling ball down to our intended purpose, to our kind of future vision. And, you know, the way that we kind of prepare

that down we're going to build on in the next few episodes and the you know I think just to kind of add to what to what you were just saying and you're summing up the way that we manage the gap between you know intended values and the real immersion values of our organization and how tightly coupled we can get those together really are the key leverage point.

in driving kind of happy, productive individuals that have strong cultural fit, that are going to make decisions in the way that we want them to be made as an organization. And you sit that kind of hand in hand with other deep structuring principle of purpose, and nail those two things. And you have an organization that, you know, beneath the surface is primed for success.

Colin (48:13)

I think it's been really interesting going into these deep structuring areas, dimensions, I guess I should call them, of purpose and values and done a fairly good job because there's a tendency to treat that as a topic as being quite theoretical. we've hopefully not made it too much about theory. But guess next week when we get onto that kind of bridge between the deep structure and the actual sort of

day-to-day operation of the growth operating system and we look at strategy, we'll start to, I guess the tone will start to shift away from just theory. Well, it's not just theory at the moment, but I guess it'd be a bit more practical and applied.

Chris (48:55)

We'll get into some stuff that you get more

tangible from next week in terms of stuff that you can see and perhaps bring into the domain of stuff that we do and spend money on.

Colin (49:06)

But I think these deep structuring ideas is something that is very interesting because people tend to, it's one of the things that people tend to get wrong the most. That's all we've got time for today, unfortunately. As I said, there's probably quite a lot more to this rich topic that we will need to return to. Please don't forget to follow and rate the podcast. It really helps us to bring content to a wider audience and we'd really appreciate a moment of your time to tell us what you think.

even if it's just to tell us what you think of my fantastic wall art that my son John has created for us here in my new more interesting background. The growth system is brought to you by RevSpace. That's us. We're a growth systems consultancy. We connect B2B organizations with the future of growth. We offer consultancy and education and applied delivery services. So we've got time for this week. We're back next week with structure.

Thanks very much. Bye bye.

Chris (50:08)

See you around.