A "values-driven organization."  Seductive, isn’t
it?  Who wouldn’t aspire to belong to such an organization?  Indeed,
what organization wouldn’t aspire to being so characterized?

However, in the "be careful what you wish for" category, we now
have a study out
of Harvard Business School, examining a small advertising agency
(given the sobriquet "Maverick Agency," not its real name) determined
to embark on an unconventional path by, among other things:

• creating ad hoc teams for every client project, of people who
  would come together, do the project, and disband;
• working for clients only on a project basis, rather
  than the conventional "brand stewardship;" and, critically
• preaching—starting with the CEO—the virtues of openness,
  diversity, unpretentiousness, a sense of community and lack of
  hierarchy.

Interestingly, the professors first approached "Maverick" as a case
study in team creativity; it was only as they got deeper into the
research, and spent time at the firm interviewing employees and watching
them interact, that they changed the focus of the study from team
creativity to what happens with corporate values gone wrong:  Namely,
"Employee Cynicism."

Here’s their core finding:

"As we conducted our interviews with employees, there was
a recurring theme: values. Many employees told us that the best thing
about the company was its values. But employees also said that the
worst thing about the company was that the CEO had been, from their
point of view, breaching the values that he himself had developed
for the company. Unwittingly, even a committed leader may appear
to followers to be violating principles he or she has espoused."

How does this happen?  Through what the professors label as,
and what we’ve all experienced:

"Value expansion." Empoyees, in other words, take what senior management
says at face value, and then reinterpret and reapply it to their concrete
situation in ways senior management may not have intended, or, far more
likely, never occurred to them.

So if a core value is "a sense of community,"
as it was at Maverick, don’t be surprised if employees think that value
is being breached whenever someone receives a negative performance review
or a senior person makes a unilateral decision without seeking consensus
(potentially for any one of a number of very good reasons, by the way).

How, then, to avoid the impression of hypocrisy?

It starts, as so many management/leadership issues do, with communication,
thorough airing of what the firm is trying to accomplish, and continuous
opportunities for two-way dialogue.  Fleshing these out, senior
management needs to:

• Acknowledge, explicitly, that different core values of a firm
  can actually be in conflict, and make sure the debate about which
  receives priority in what context is wide-open and conducted with
  all cards turned face up.  For example, the value of "professional
  development" can be in conflict with the value of "the client always
  gets our most experienced person for their issue."  Talk
  about this.
• Provide a "comfort zone," or a psychological safety zone, as
  the authors put it, within which employees can express their fears,
  misgivings, and even their distrust or budding alienation.  Within
  this zone, speak as candidly and comprehensively as possible.  For
  example?  Well, they cite the case of Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream
  (known here in the East as Edy’s), which due to a combination of
  skyrocketing commodity prices and intense competition had to undertake
  a drastic financial restructuring in 1998.  Rather than simply
  announce the news to the financial community and let middle management
  carry out the dirty work, senior management flew to every Dreyer’s
  facility in the country and explained, until no more questions
  were forthcoming, to all employees why they needed to do what they
  were and what the implications would be for everyone.

What else is to be done? 

While bare naked hypocrisy is not an approach anyone this side of
Caligula would endorse, recognize that circumstances can transpire
to paint one into that nasty box: 

"Hypocrisy may be unavoidable
for leaders in the modern world. With rapid changes in the environment,
it can be very hard for leaders to keep promises at “Time 2” that they
made at “Time 1.”"

If this happens to you—if, say, you’ve promised associates will
be up for partner in their 7th year, and for competitive reasons you
have to change it their 9th year—then it’s time for what will
be one of the more painful, albeit essential, public grillings you’ll
get.

Like the senior executives at Dreyer, you’d best be prepared to
stand in the well of the auditorium (symbolically at least), taking
questions from the floor until there are no more questions.  And
do it again on a regular basis until the storm has passed.

Don’t like it?  Think that it’s unfair that someone such as
yourself of unquestionable upright moral fiber could ever be accused
of hypocrisy, when all one has at heart is the firm’s best interests?

As they say on the ball field, "Suck it up."  And
as I say on "Adam Smith, Esq.," "That’s what you get paid for."