I'm a great believer in personal values. I've written before that people who work to personal values are both more effective and also more efficient as their personal energy rises with work that is consistent with their values. This I buy. But what about companies and organizations? Can they really have values that are as potent and as meaningful as personal values? Can they?
Flicking through the values statements of different organizations, the values are all pretty much the same. There is lots of creativity, integrity, customer-focussed type values. There is not that much to separate them and this gets worse when you divide by industry: charities have values that stress diversity, professional services are big on integrity, and retail companies focus on customer care.
To be honest, once you know what the industry is you can hazard a guess at what the values will be and 9 times out of 10 you will be right.
This is not the same for people. You can't predict the values. There are always surprises. But for organizations it is pretty easy.
I guess the reason for this is that most organizations set their values to appeal to the widest number of people. But this results in blandness. The same old phases churned out.
I remember asking someone what he thought the values his company wanted to stress. Be professional, he said, and be nice about it.
What more does any organization need?