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 From Standards and Leadership: Putting Values to Work "In effect, Standards serve as 'Translators' of the Values, providing a tangible, visual, and real interpretation of Values into daily behavior and communications." Susan Smith-Kuczmarski Values Based Leadership Regardless of what you do in life, whether it be the search for excellence as an Olympic athlete, the passion of a symphony conductor, the desire to conquer new worlds in outer space, or the goal of leading a business or team to peak performance, you need to have a yardstick, a measuring tool to define how you are doing and what the Standards are to continue to excel. There are thousands of books written on Leadership and Management, nearly all of which talk about the importance of having a Vision, a future goal of where you want to go. Many even discuss the necessity of having a set of core Values to help you achieve that goal. Very few, however, mention the next critical step - translating the Values into action. Without this "translation," Values can become just a wish list of how everyone should conduct themselves for the good of the business or team. In the last several years, we have certainly seen highly respected business names such as Enron and Worldcom get into serious trouble. If you study these, you'll find that most of the businesses that got into trouble did in fact have a core set of Values published and communicated. In many cases these were well thought out and well defined, yet the business crashed and burned. In interview after interview with people within these corporations, what we learned was that no one was actually LIVING the values. The Values had not been broken down into daily or weekly actionable items that could be measured to determine if the Values were in fact being met. We call these actionable items Standards. We have come across many definitions for the term "Standards" and have settled on the following: Standards are quantifiable and measurable NORMS for performance and behavior. They must support the Vision and Values established by the business entity, whether it be at the corporate level, the department level, or the individual level. Without that connection, Standards may become just another set of dictates with no purpose or meaning and certainly nothing that people would willingly subscribe to and follow.For Standards to be an effective yardstick, they must be quantifiable and measurable. There must be no ambiguity or room for misinterpretation to them. People should be able to clearly see what is expected of them and where they stand in relation to that expectation. We believe that no one ever gets up in the morning or comes to work wanting to screw up. We believe that in most cases when this happens, it is because people do not know what the expectations are, what the Standards are, and what needs to be done to meet or exceed those Standards. Standards need to be clearly established in three areas critical for success in business and life: quantity, quality, and behavior. How well a business performs is directly related to what is done each day from an outputs perspective. Therefore, leadership needs to insure that Standards exist around Quantity (i.e. how much is sold, what revenue is generated, etc.) and Quality (i.e. meeting customer's expectations). These two areas can and should be very measurable. The third critical area, which is many times overlooked even in the most successful businesses, is the establishment of Standards for Behavior - how people treat each other and work together for the common good. Standards around behavior are sometimes more difficult to develop. However, when you begin with the definitions of your core Values, it is much easier for people to come up with the Standards to support those Values. If you say that "Respect for the Individual" is a core Value, then standards around team meetings might include not being late, not interrupting someone else when they are speaking, etc. None of these Standards will have any power if there are no consequences behind them. If you look up the definition of the word "consequences," the dictionary simply says "...the result of your actions," so consequences can be positive as well as negative. Either way, people need to be held accountable for their actions. By doing so, you as the leader demonstrate that the Standards set are important and everyone must adhere to them. Question that arise then, include: what are the Standards that you as the leader hold people accountable for? Have you developed Standards in all three areas, Quality, Quantity, and Behavior, and do you have consequences defined within each area? How well have you communicated these Standards to your team? With these in mind, how do you and your company fair? What could you put in place to change some of the perceptions? What are the core values needed to add passion to the work environment for your people? And how do you "translate" these Values into everyday action through Standards? In study after study of Peak Performing Teams, what truly separates them from average teams is the fact that the peak performers have a strong foundation based on a clear Vision of where they are going, a well-defined set of core Values on how they will work together to get there, and unambiguous Standards that flesh out the Vision and Values into everyday work and relationships. Consider these the three keys to Peak Performance. Lou Holtz, the championship coach for Notre Dame, in Winning Every Day, says: "When you lower your standards (or have no standards), you show you're willing to accept mediocrity. You render a disservice to your organization and your people..." Contact us at 303-814-8100 for more information on how BreakThroughs can help your organization create Standards reflecting your company's Values.Key questions to ask yourself are:
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