The values dilemma

Imagine an organisation that genuinely values collaboration. One of its most successful executives consistently delivers exceptional results, but their way of working creates friction elsewhere in the business.

The dilemma is real. Performance matters. So does behaviour.

Reward the result without addressing the wider impact and colleagues may conclude that performance ultimately matters more than collaboration. Focus only on behaviour and the organisation risks undervaluing genuine commercial contribution.

Neither response is as simple as a values statement might suggest.

The same tension appears elsewhere. An organisation can value innovation while still needing to manage the cost of failure. It can value inclusion while appointing the strongest available candidate. It can encourage challenge while also needing leadership teams to align behind a decision once it has been made.

The issue is not necessarily hypocrisy. More often, values meet competing priorities, incentives and circumstances.

This is why behaviour is a useful way of thinking about organisational culture. Rather than asking only what an organisation says about itself, look at what happens when there is a difficult decision to make.

Research into psychological safety is relevant here. Amy Edmondson’s work emphasises the importance of people being able to speak up, raise concerns and acknowledge mistakes, while more recent work with Michaela Kerrissey cautions against confusing psychological safety with comfort or an absence of accountability. The objective is candour, learning and better performance.¹

That distinction matters. A leadership team can genuinely value challenge and still expect debate to be constructive. It can encourage people to speak openly while also expecting decisions, once made, to be supported.

Culture therefore isn’t simply the values displayed on the wall. It is also what people learn from watching how difficult choices are handled.

For global organisations, there is another layer.

The same value may be expressed differently across cultures. Direct disagreement may feel entirely natural in one leadership team and unnecessarily confrontational in another. Consensus can signal inclusion in one environment and appear slow in another.

Cross-cultural leadership research, including the GLOBE programme, has demonstrated meaningful differences in expectations around authority, assertiveness, decision-making and collectivism.²

That does not mean reducing individuals to national stereotypes. It means recognising that behaviour is interpreted through context.

Consistency of principle does not always require identical behaviour.

Perhaps the most useful question to ask of any corporate value is not simply "Do we believe this?" but "What does this ask us to do when the decision is difficult?"

If you value innovation, how do you respond to a well-judged experiment that fails? If you value long-term thinking, what happens when it comes at the expense of this quarter’s result? If you value challenge, how do you respond when somebody respectfully questions a strongly held view?

Those questions make values practical.

They also acknowledge something important: values do not remove difficult decisions. Sometimes they make those decisions harder.

The strongest organisations may not be those that claim to live their values perfectly in every circumstance.

They may be the ones prepared to recognise where genuine tensions exist, discuss them openly and make conscious choices about the behaviours they want to encourage.