Coherence by Watkins Alan

Author:Watkins, Alan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kogan Page

The influence of values on thinking

One of the key internal lines of development that alter and impact smart thinking is personal values. Values will be unpacked in much more detail in Chapter 6 because not only do they influence what we think about but they significantly alter our relationships and the way we interact with others.

One of the critical principles that underpin Enlightened Leadership across all lines of development is the need and drive toward greater and greater differentiation. Differentiation is the critical middle step necessary for evolution of anything, and business is certainly no exception. In fact one of the reasons I believe that business gets into so much trouble or fails to live up to its highest potential is that we collectively have not refined our ability to differentiate within the lexicon of business itself. If we asked a hundred senior leaders the difference between vision and mission or mission and ambition or ambition and purpose we would get a hundred different answers or interpretations. If we asked a different hundred leaders the difference between values and beliefs or beliefs and attitudes or attitudes and culture we would get the same variety of answers.

Some years ago I was asked by one of the big five global consultancies to talk at their values day. They shut their London office for a day and 400 people attended the event to discuss culture and values. I asked the group in a breakout session, ‘What are the values in this company?’ No one answered. I said that I assumed as no one answered they must have no values, but then someone responded by saying that the company had six values. The person who spoke up was the leader of the London office. The overriding value of that company was evident in the reaction to my question – it was fear. No one wanted to speak before he did. The first true value in that system was fear. Then when the leader of the London office told me of the values of their organization, three were behaviours, two were instructions and one was an operational standard; not a single one of what they thought were their ‘values’ was actually a value. This was pretty disconcerting considering this consultancy advised other organizations on values.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is a fundamental part of the problem. We can’t have an educated and productive conversation about anything unless we are all clear that we are actually talking about the same thing. If two people are talking about wine for example and one only has the differentiation capability to tell white from red and red from rosé while the other could tell everything from country of origin to the altitude the grape was grown at as well as the type of grape, then the conversation will be pretty short and unproductive. The discrepancy between the level and quality of thinking in this conversation will however be very clear to both parties within about

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