Without Living Our Values, Things Can Go REALLY Wrong!
In early December of 2001, I was just getting my feet under me in the behavior-based safety role I had accepted in the spring of that year, doing all I could to take care of our young family, and still reeling a bit from our freedom being attacked just a few months prior. I remember seeing the headlines detailing Enron filing for bankruptcy but I won’t pretend that I had a finger on the pulse of all it meant or how it unfolded. In the months and years that follow, however, I read plenty outlining what a lack of values ended up costing so many people who had ties to that organization!
Since that happened more than two decades ago, and since even a shit show that big was overshadowed by what ended up being a global war on terror, let’s take a walk down memory lane. There’s no shortage of articles summarizing it, but here’s one I found called “Enron Code of Ethics” on fbi.gov, something I would have considered a very reliable source just a few years ago, “The executives of Enron defrauded thousands of people out of their life savings, leading to financial ruin for many of the employees that they purported to hold to high ethical standards.”
The article provides what I felt was a comprehensive snapshot of what unfolded and a wide-eyed look at the investigation(s) that followed. After explaining just how much data was seized as evidence, retired Supervisory Special Agent Michael E. Anderson, who led the Enron Task Force in Houston was quoted as sharing this:
“Enron was a company where it was OK to lie; it was OK to cheat as long as you were making money for the company. And that attitude was permissible up to the top levels of the company. Both Skilling and Lay [the former CEOs of Enron], they agreed with that, and they allowed employees, they tolerated transgressions as long as employees were making money for the company,”
As we started down this path, I shared my own recent experience of working with a company that provided a textbook example of how clearly defined values can make a positive impact on each team member AND drive substantial increases in revenue and profitability. If we were to take a quick look at the two side-by-side, we could easily assume that Enron lacked clear values - and we’d be wrong! While there was clearly a lack of living out their values, they did have a clear set posted for the world to see!
Strong Values & Clear Definitions that Fell Flat
As an organization, Enron had indeed identified their values:
Respect: We treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves. We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness and arrogance don't belong here.
Integrity: We work with customers and prospects openly, honestly and sincerely. When we say we will do something, we will do it; when we say we cannot or will not do something, then we won't do it.
Communication: We have an obligation to communicate. Here, we take the time to talk with one another…and to listen. We believe that information is meant to move and that information moves people.
Excellence: We are satisfied with nothing less than the very best in everything we do. We will continue to raise the bar for everyone. The great fun here will be for all of us to discover just how good we can really be.
I pulled this list from Enron’s “Statement of Human Rights Principles” as shared on Sacramento State University’s website…Â
Now, think back to the statement made by Supervisory Special Agent Michael E. Anderson: “Enron was a company where it was OK to lie; it was OK to cheat as long as you were making money for the company.”
Cindy and I have initially shared a lesson with our Executive Leadership Elite Think Tank, then built that lesson into a half day workshop for several of the organizations represented in that group, where we mention just the values: respect, integrity, communication, and excellence. We challenged the individuals in each group to detail what they thought of when they heard those words. While definitions varied some, they weren’t terribly far off from what you see from Enron above. Quite frankly, those are some of the clearest and best stated values I’ve seen. Somewhere along the line, though, that train ran off the tracks! When we shared the name of the organization those values came from, nearly everyone’s chin dropped.
Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for even the strongest values with the clearest definitions to be detailed in a handbook and painted on the walls of the organization while even some of the most senior supervisors and managers struggle to list them. We recently opened a session with a group by asking for volunteers to share their values. While a few offered some ideas off the top of their head, no one could list any of the company’s actual core values - and those values were painted on the wall in the room…
Make no mistake, I’m not placing blame on anyone in that group. All too often, we’re caught up in the urgency of the day-to-day and lose sight of the clear purpose that should be driving us and the values that define who we are as an organization. While our team may be mostly dialed in, we cannot allow room for the definitions of those values to drift. And they absolutely will if we’re not talking about them in detail, constantly, so we’ll work through that soon. First, though, we need to understand just how easy it can be for any one of us to drift, ever so slightly, away from even the most clearly defined values…
No One Chooses to Fall Flat
I can point to dozens of powerful lessons I learned in the decade and a half I had direct involvement in behavior-based safety. While the initiative was focused on identifying and decreasing the risks the workforce was exposed to, it provided a hands-on look at why people do what they do. I’d put that real world experience up against any kind of degree in psychology all day long!Â
While it’s not the lesson I reference most often, recognizing that no one gets out of bed on any given day hoping to have an accident certainly ranks in the top ten. I’m guessing you just rolled your eyes (at least a little bit) as you considered that statement. Duh, Wes, of course no one would do that… Yet, every single day, we all do things that put us at risk of injury - sometimes death! My initial training in the behavior-based safety concept in 1998 taught me not only how to recognize the actions someone does that can expose them to injury, but how to ask open-ended questions to identify why they chose (yes, chose) to do something that could get them hurt.
The responses ranged from “I didn’t realize I was so close to being injured” or “That’s the only way the job can be done” to “I have to do it that way to make my numbers.” As you likely imagine, we heard plenty of other replies, too; those were just some of the most common. In each case, though, the reason for choosing the behavior did nothing to prevent an injury. To compound that, the risks someone was exposed to typically became more significant over time. Each time they performed an at-risk behavior without being injured served to reinforce it as an acceptable way of doing the job. And with that reinforcement came more confidence for assuming even higher levels of risk. Unfortunately, the worst workplace injuries I ever dealt with were ones where someone had taken (often multiple) risks in doing their job for years without the slightest issue.
During my time in human resources, dealing with some of the most miserable scenarios you can imagine in the workplace, I had to reflect on this often. Just like no one wakes up hoping to get hurt at some point in their day, people rarely want to do a poor job or be seen as being a bad person. Without revisiting that thought, at least occasionally, having multiple disciplinary action conversations each day would leave me a worldview that was more than a little bit jaded…
With that in mind, let’s consider how strong values with clear definitions could fall flat. If Enron employees were exposed to the detailed values I shared before, even occasionally, I can’t picture many consciously choosing to violate them. I’d go so far as to bet that just the words alone, without the concise definitions detailing what each meant for the organization, gave most of them a strong reference for how they should do business. But, like taking incrementally more risks for being injured, I can understand how the pressures to achieve organizational targets could lead to pushing the boundaries of any one of those values; a little at first, but more and more over time as the results met those targets without the behavior that produced those results being called into question. I’d guess situations where someone wildly violated any specific value were few and far between. But with even the slightest bit of ambiguity around exactly how the value applied to a specific scenario allowed the individual involved to form their own definition that justified why it was necessary and only slightly pushed the boundary those values provided.
When results get more attention than the behaviors that led to those results, you can bet those behaviors will get repeated! In far too many cases, business owners and high level executives get caught in the urgency of the daily fires burning their backside and drift away from ensuring the message they’re sharing with their teams, the managers they count on to run their businesses, includes clear definitions for their organizational values. And that opens the door to the slippery slope that leads to a fall - so we’ll pick up there soon!