Thanks to everyone who has purchased the book Built On Values-Creating an enviable culture that outperforms the competition  by Ann Rhoades.  People Ink has received positive feedback from business leaders, companies, and clients about the value and usefulness of the book.  It is now a candidate for the 2011 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards.  Nominees for the the 2011 awards are posted here

The winning books, authors, and publishers from the categories of Marketing and Sales, General Business, Entrepreneurship and Small Business, Finance and Economics, Innovation and Creativity, Leadership, Management, and Personal Development will be announced in January 2012.

The book – Built on Values helps companies get on the pathway to greatness by showing the exact steps for either curing an ailing organizational culture or creating a new one from scratch.

800-CEO-READ’s founder and president Jack Covert says the  Book Awards offer a great opportunity to review and distinguish the top titles of the year. “We want to thank the nominees and everyone who participated in this year’s awards. For the past twenty-seven years, we’ve been the only bookseller in the country focused exclusively on the business audience. This experience has put us in the unique position to highlight the best of the genre,” says Covert.

Ann Rhoades is an experienced Human Resources expert, she is known for creating corporate cultures based on values, customer service excellence, and employee engagement. Prior to founding People Ink Ann served as the Chief People Officer of Southwest Airlines, Promus Hotel Company (Doubletree Hotel, Homewood Suites, Embassy Suites, and Hampton Inn brands), and JetBlue Airways.

A recent online article by The Economist Magazine reports that Walmart is trying to instill a “Values-Based” organizational culture. Congratulations. If you need help please call us

“AS WALMART grew into the world’s largest retailer, its staff were subjected to a long list of dos and don’ts covering every aspect of their work. Now the firm has decided that its rules-based culture is too inflexible to cope with the challenges of globalisation and technological change, and is trying to instil a “values-based” culture, in which employees can be trusted to do the right thing because they know what the firm stands for.”    source The Economist Magazine

You know that a leadership principle has finally made mainstream if Walmart is attempting to use it.

It may have become a hot topic but organizational cultures built on values has been around for some time. Examples can be found in Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Starbucks Coffee, and Walt Disney to name a few.  We have been developing and promoting this idea for 25 years.

Values is a hot topic because of the successes of companies who have successfully built their culture around performance and values.  Many of these companies have become standouts in their industry. Other companies such as Zappos have demonstrated that an intentional company culture creates a unique brand identity clearly distinguishing it from competitors while also building customer loyalty.

Values-Based Cultures: Is it more than a new catch phrase?

Remember back in 90′s when the new catch word was “team” and “teamwork”.  More recently “employee engagement” has also taken hold. The problem is that simply using a new theory without a full understanding of it is like putting a new mission statement on the wall every few years.  In this sense, you can’t say your going to implement a Values- Based Culture without understanding that there is more to it than putting some values on the wall and expecting people to live them.

This same article by the Economist went on to say there is still a big difference between actual values implementation and theory. In a study conducted by the Boston Research Group…

“Only 3% fell into the category of “self-governance”, in which everyone is guided by a set of core principles and values that inspire everyone to align around a company’s mission”

This does not surprise us at all.  In her book Built On Values, Ann Rhoades provides a comprehensive blueprint for creating a Values-Based Culture.  Her process reveals that company leaders must lead by example and are the ones most responsible for driving the values.    One of the key success factors is living the values. You cannot expect your employees to live a value that clearly is not held by leaders and management.

There are many components to a values-based approach to management. Some of the most important are.

• make sure values are defined in ways that are simple and understandable by everyone in the organization.
• understand the link between stated values and what that means in terms of employee behaviors.
• you must hire, reward, recognize, and even fire people based upon stated values.
• you must maintain the simple discipline needed to keep your culture from falling into old habits.

Related Articles:

Overview of Values-Based Leadership

Defining Your Organization’s Values-A Step towards Intentional Workplace Culture

Interview Strategy-Your Quest to Attract Top Talent

PeopleInk is a professional consulting firm specializing in organizational culture and people resource management.  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter

Employee Engagement and Management Practices.

Question: Lately I’ve been reading about employee engagement at work and strategies to help promote employee engagement. To me some employees seem more motivated about doing a good job and it’s not really a management issue. Do you think an engaged workforce is up to management or is it that some people are just more engaged because of the innate personal qualities they have such as integrity?

“Fundamentally, you have to have the right people working for you”

Gayle: Well, it’s both, but most importantly employee engagement comes down to hiring the right people, the people that reflect the Values of your organization. Of course you can do things to reinforce employee engagement, but fundamentally you have to have the right people and if you don’t have the right people, then you won’t be able to engage them.  There is a saying, that you can teach a squirrel to fly, but it’s easier to hire the eagle. Hiring “A” players is one of the most important things leaders can do. “A” players not only have the technical skills required but also demonstrate company Values such as integrity that you mention. When you start out seeking to fill your organization with “A” players the job of employee engagement gets much easier compared to trying to re-train workers or introduce new engagement strategies.

Leaders are also important and must be first to live the Values because they are the ones who drive the values. Once you understand that, and hire the right people you are on the way to creating your organizational culture by design.

Question: Is employee engagement a simple matter of hiring the right people?

Gayle: As I mentioned, hiring “A” players is the most important single thing, yet leaders also need to reinforce the culture by appropriately recognizing and rewarding employees who consistently demonstrate the Values and Behaviors every day.  Leaders must “walk the talk” and make managerial and business decisions based on the Values. The best companies take an active and visible role in employee engagement.

How do you spot engaged employees?

Question: How do you go about finding engaged people from a brief job interview?

Gayle: It can be done through a process called behavioral interviewing.  Behavioral interviewing has been around for a long time and is based on the principle: past behavior predicts future behavior.  We advocate that you must incorporate hiring for Values. But first you define your values behaviorally, and then you incorporate the search for people who have those values and behaviors into your interview and recruiting process.  Behavioral interviewing involves asking very specific questions about how a candidate handled certain situations. What we look for is actual behaviors not theoretical ones. With a little training in asking questions and digging for examples you get a much better understanding of a candidate’s history than relying only on technical skills and gut feel.

As an example: If one of your Values is “Integrity”, then you would ask behavioral questions around integrity and around the behaviors you expect. For example a behavioral question might be “Give me an example of a decision you made where you put your job on the line”.  The answer to that question will reflect a real life example of how this person acts on integrity.

I’ve only briefly touched upon this topic today but if you’re interested all of this and more is contained in the book, Built on Values: creating an enviable culture that outperforms the competition, by Ann Rhoades.

Related Articles:

Interview Strategy-Your Quest to Attract Top Talent

Defining Your Organization’s Values-A Step towards Intentional Workplace Culture

“I have a quick question….  I am working with a client to define “values.”  Bought your book and discovered that the Values Team is doing much of what you suggest, which is nice to learn! However, we are getting very hung up on what is a value, vs. a strategy.  I don’t find any distinguishing definitions in the book.  Any help?”

What are Organizational Values?

This is a great question and one we get asked frequently when we are facilitating Values Blueprint® Workshops. Organizational Values are those beliefs held so strongly that they drive people’s behavior and dictate how people interact with and treat each other. Values, together with their defined Behaviors, set the minimum expectation of behavior for everyone in your organization, and help to lay the ground work for your company’s culture. We call this set of Values and Behaviors a Values Blueprint®. If your organization has been working on its culture for some time, then all employees should be able to state your organization’s Values and describe the Behavior that is expected of them.

As an example: One of JetBlue Airways’ Values is Fun. The Behaviors they have defined for Fun include:

• Exhibits a sense of humor and ability to laugh at self
  
• Adds personality to the customer experience
  
• Demonstrates and creates enthusiasm for the job
  
• Seeks to convert a negative situation into a positive customer experience
  
• Creates a friendly environment where taking risks is okay

If you do a good job of defining your Core Values with Behaviors, you can hire to it, promote to it, evaluate to it, reward to it, and fire to it.

Don’t Confuse Values with Results

Strategic Goals specify WHAT your organization will accomplish. Values specify HOW you will accomplish your goals. When identifying the corporate Values, you want to make sure the words you choose actually are Values. When your team suggests a word as a Value, make sure the word is something you can create behaviors around, after all… Values without Behaviors are not actionable. You also want to make sure proposed Values do not represent expected results. For instance, Financial Success might not be a Value. Financial success is a result rather than a Value. Financial success is the result of possibly several values, such as good customer service, fiscal responsibility, and sustained growth.

Organizations that do a good job of defining their Values with Behaviors will eventually create a culture that supports high performance. The Juniper Networks Values Blueprint®, known as “The Juniper Way,” sets the expectation that every employee living the five Values is fundamental to their success in the next decade: Authentic, Trust, Excellence, Bold Aspirations, and Meaningful Difference.

Hire the Best People with a Values-Based Interview Strategy

By: Ann Rhoades, author of Built on Values: Creating an Enviable Culture that Outperforms the Competition (Jossey-Bass, 2011.)

In your quest to attract top talent, are you hiring too many people who are just average? Why not let your best people help you select candidates who are a better fit for your corporate culture?

Getting your best people – your A Players – involved in the hiring process is a technique I call values interviewing, as part of a values-based hiring strategy.

I’ve seen this approach work at companies like JetBlue, where I was a founding executive, and at many other clients of my company, People Ink.  At Loma Linda University Medical Center, for example, after values-based hiring was put in place, turnover fell precipitously, from 18 percent per year to 1 percent in the ICU; the hospital’s “patient engagement score” (a measure of customer satisfaction) rose to 99 percent.

One of our clients reported an “Aha!” moment when interviewing a person with twenty years’ experience and a sterling resume. He said that previously he would have hired her on sight. But when he asked her to tell him about the specific steps she took to “increase revenue by 38 percent,” as her resume stated, she simply couldn’t do it.

Being able to articulate the behaviors associated with achievements is a key component of values hiring and one that a traditional interview strategy usually misses.

At Southwest, when I was Chief People Officer, we did a regression analysis of the behavior of our employees over a two-year period that proved that the most successful employees were the ones who could articulate past behaviors that matched with our values.

Even your job postings online will attract a better class of job applicant if your values and the desired behaviors associated with them are an explicit part of your recruiting message. Simply put, you’ll attract more people “like you.”

Improve your Interview Outcomes

“A typical interview,” writes Stephanie Clifford of Inc., “unstructured, rambling, unfocused — tells the interviewer almost nothing about candidates, other than how they seem during a couple of meetings in a conference room.”

Once a values-hiring process is implemented, interviewers will all ask the same open-ended behavior- or values-based questions of every applicant and can objectively compare their answers. If done correctly, values hiring takes much of the guesswork out of interviewing, allowing the interviewer to make educated decisions based on a person’s past behavior, rather than emotional or gut responses.

Yes, I am recommending that you change the way you hire people throughout your company. I guarantee that if you stick with this new hiring method for six months, you will wonder why you ever did it any other way.

A Better Hiring Process: Start with One Key Position

Step 1: The first step in values-based hiring is to apply it to a position that is vital to the customer’s perceptions of your company (in order words, it represents high value to your company) and is a position that’s difficult to keep filled.

Some examples: An airline might start with pilots. Some companies might start with the customer service agent position. At Loma Linda, they started with the “environmental care specialist,” known elsewhere as the custodial staff.

After all, these people are seen by everyone and trusted to create a neat, sterile environment; they interact with patients, come into contact with the public in the lobbies and halls and must have high standards of cleanliness.  Yet the turnover in this position was more than a third annually, making it a great place to start.

Step 2: Uncover the Job’s Key Attributes
Once you’ve chosen the position, the next step is to identify its key attributes. The values-hiring innovation: start by interviewing the best people who already hold this job in your company.  Ask these employees questions such as:

• If you were looking to recruit a great person for your own position, what would you be looking for?

• What skills help you do your job well?

Then, add relevant behavior-based questions like this one:

• Tell me about a difficult situation that you handled successfully.

A list of ten to fifteen success characteristics will emerge fairly clearly; relevant supervisors or managers should be asked to rank them in order of importance and narrow the list to the most important five or six.

Although this validation can be time-consuming, the involvement of employees who actually do the job adds credibility to the process and cultivates a sense of ownership among the workforce.

At Loma Linda, for example, key employees agreed that the key attributes of an environmental care specialist were “customer focus,” “accuracy and attention to detail,” and “adaptability.”

These traits can help your team formulate meaningful interview questions that become part of your company’s interview guide. A values-based approach to hiring will also help you create a more structured and fair process for hiring great people.

This is a guest post by Kursty Groves of EnviableWorkPlace.com (visit their site to read more interesting articles on workplace culture, design, creativity)

News travels fast when there’s a new cool office that’s been opened – especially when that office belongs to one of the most talked-about companies in the world: Google.  With about a billion requests processed per day by the ubiquitous search machine, Google’s bid to ‘organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’ is ever-becoming a reality.   But what’s just as remarkable as the bold business ambition is the expectations on what Google demands of its work spaces.

Google’s recently opened new ‘overspill’ office in London remains true to it message that the office is an opportunity to show employees that it cares, and that work can be, no should be fun.  The following extracts from I Wish I Worked There! – A Look Inside the Most Creative Spaces in Business refer to Google’s Headquarters in Mountain View, USA, Google New York, Google Zurich and Google London specifically:

“Googly principles, Local Flavour

With offices and centres of engineering all over the world, maintaining a sense of identity is important for preserving the Google culture.  Visit more than one location and you begin to appreciate that there is a balance to be maintained between a strong company identity and encouraging expressions of local flavour.  The same fundamental principles are shared across any Google office globally: individual-to-team space ratio, common areas and number of meeting rooms as well as a few staples such as the micro-kitchens, tech stops and lava lamps in the lobby, but there’s also a different Googly imprint to every office.  With around 400 people, Zurich boasts the largest population of Google engineers outside of the USA and, as one of the newest spaces in the Google family, has benefited from the experiments and learning from other offices.  Located in an old brewery, a complete refit enabled the best of Google working environments to be put into implementation.  With 100 meeting spaces to furnish, the in-house team had the freedom to break away from the standard glass cubes; instead fashioning ‘huddle spaces’ from reclaimed ski gondolas, refurbished Antarctic expedition igloos and egg-shaped dens, each decorated according to different themes that correspond with different working floors. Meanwhile New York is the largest Google office outside of Mountain View, spans an entire block in Manhattan’s Chelsea district and is home to almost 2,000 Googlers.  Here, micro-kitchens look more like funky loft apartments, scooters replace those Mountain View bicycles and its floor plan echoes the Manhattan street layout.

By having a standard approach to the way the company operates – learning what works and continually building on that – Google saves on having to reinvent and redesign the basic workspace.  Importantly, they have a solution for keeping entrepreneurial energy alive, while leaving room for local teams to cast their own image and personality on the spaces.  This is empowerment and individuality at work, all at once.

Serious Without A Suit

With a spaceship, slides, igloos and firemen’s poles, Google’s office spaces sound more like a themed adventure park than the working environment of a global brand.  Yet while they have developed a reputation for goofy-sounding offices, what lies beneath the bright colours, lava lamps and yoga balls is a deep understanding of the drivers behind creative thinkers and how the environment can play a huge role in making challenging work fun.  By developing and nurturing a relaxed, playful and fun atmosphere, more profound, human connections are created amongst people, reducing the fear factor and ensuring good work gets done.  At Google the culture and internal practices often evolve as a result of environmental needs, not the other way around. A slide isn’t a childish gimmick, it’s an efficient way of descending from floor to floor.  Coloured exercise balls are good for your posture, cheap and fun.”

A word of warning: What works for Google and its people will not work for all. Bold, themed playrooms will appear tacky and forced in a company that values subtlety and whose personality is reserved.  Take time to understand the essence of your culture and use that as inspiration to wear your heart on the walls.

For more about Google and other enviable workplaces, check out I Wish I Worked There! – A Look Inside the Most Creative Spaces in Business. *Photographs published in I Wish I Worked There! and used with permission by Google, Inc.*
This article published with permission from EnviableWorkplace.com

We are very pleased that one of our former clients is being recognized among the top companies in the world.  What follows is  a letter written to Ann Rhoades of People Ink from Gregory Pryor, vice president of leadership and organization effectiveness at Juniper Networks.

Ann;  I hope that things are going well. We are giving your book out to everyone that we know — and they love it!!! I thought you would appreciate knowing that we were named as one of the world’s most ethical companies today. While the whole press release is below, I thought you would truly enjoy the quote from our General Council Mitch Gaynor who you may remember from our workout session.  We continue to be so pleased and humbled by the results that the renewed Juniper Way continues to produce.  Thank you as always. “We are extremely pleased with this recognition. At Juniper, we believe who we are on the inside is who we are on the outside. Our core values direct our employees’ decisions and actions, and require an unwavering dedication to the highest ethical standards from employees at every level of our organization” said Mitchell Gaynor, executive vice president, general counsel and secretary, Juniper Networks. “Having this distinction contributes to our being an industry leader and employer of choice.”

************************   Official Press Release:  *********************************

SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 16, 2011 — Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR), has been recognized by the Ethisphere Institute as one of the 2011 World’s Most Ethical Companies. Out of a record number of nominations for the award, Juniper Networks secured a hard-earned spot on the list by going the extra mile and implementing upright business practices and initiatives that are instrumental to the company’s success, benefit the community, and raise the bar for ethical standards within the industry.

This is the fifth year Ethisphere, a think-tank dedicated to the creation, advancement and sharing of best practices in business ethics, corporate social responsibility, anti-corruption and sustainability, has published the WME rankings, which appear in Ethisphere Magazine’s Q1 issue.

Ethisphere reviewed thousands of companies and evaluated a record number of applications utilizing its propriety methodology through in-depth research and multi-step analysis, naming 110 companies that surpassed their industry peers to this year’s World’s Most Ethical Companies list. The 2011 list features companies in 38 industries including 43 companies headquartered outside the United States.

A sampling of other winners includes American Express, eBay, Ford Motor Company, Adidas, Starbucks, PepsiCo and Xerox Corporation.

‘As companies strive to maintain a competitive advantage, good ethics translate into better business, and better business means better bottom lines. Juniper Networks recognizes the important role that principled practices play in brand reputation, which ultimately is the most valuable asset for a corporation,’ said Alex Brigham, Executive Director of the Ethisphere Institute. ‘Each year, the competition gets more intense for the World’s Most Ethical Companies and this year was no exception with a record number of organizations vying for this distinguished honor. Ethisphere congratulates Juniper Networks on being one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies for 2011.

Please visit http://ethisphere.com/ and find out some of the programs they are offering.

Read about the methodology and view the complete list of the 2011 World’s Most Ethical Companies here. http://ethisphere.com/wme2011/

Ann Rhoades provides overview of Values-Based Organizational Leadership. Video.

What drives performance in values based organizations?

The basic model that we teach and use is that organizational leaders drive the values, values then drive the behaviors, the behaviors drive the culture, and the culture ultimately defines the performance.

Successful Organizations are Predictable

If you look at the companies that have values based leadership, not only can you really predict what the behavior will be like when you interact with those organizations, but they also have strong leaders who live the values every day. These companies have also had some great performance numbers.

It is very rare that organizations hire people around the values. The People Ink model shows you how to do that. We truly believe “You are on the outside what you are on the inside”. It’s difficult to ask an employee to deliver a great customer experience when in fact their experience as an employee has not been so great.

Behavior Based Interviewing

When we interview someone at Southwest airlines we always ask, “give us an example of when you used your sense of humor in a tough customer situation”. As you can see, In the hiring process we have identified a value that we can tie to a candidates past behavior. Behavior based interviewing as it is called has a high degree on on the job predictive success . As a result you have a lot of people that are having fun every day.

Employee Participation

Another part of the model that we believe in is that we actually have people participate in making the company successful financially. This can involve giving people input into aspects of their job that affects performance outcomes which of course makes them feel part of the process.

This model applies to all sizes of organizations and levels of leaders. It applies as much to teachers as it does to CEOs. There is something in this model for everyone who wants to be part of building a values based organization.  Our book is available on Amazon or in your local book store.

It has been over a year in the making but my new book is finally out in book stores. Yippee!!  This is a photo from a local Barnes & Noble store. More photos will be forthcoming.   I would like to express my thanks to all the people who have helped bring this to publication including my partners, colleagues, clients, and friends whom I list in the book.  No book is written alone and for all those who have contributed I consider it our book.  My fervent wish is that the knowledge I have helped develop over the years will be useful to organizations looking to create a desirable work place where people are treated fairly and hopefully encouraged to reach both organizational and individual potential.

Normally I leave writing of books to the professors but with the many requests over the years to put our culture management model into print it seemed like a worthwhile endeavor and one that I believe people can take and literally apply within their organizations.  Look for more information, content, even videos in the near future.

Our local Barnes & Noble

Q&A with Ann Rhoades, author of Built on Values: Creating an Enviable Culture that Outperforms the Competition.Based on Ann’s years of experience with JetBlue, Southwest and other companies known for their trailblazing corporate cultures, Built on Values reveals exactly how leaders can create winning environments that allow their employees and their companies to thrive.

Overdrive: How integral is a company’s culture to its overall success and profitability?

AnnR: Every company has a culture, but a negative culture – where employees feel used up and spit out – works against your ability to succeed and make profit. You need a positive culture that empowers people to outperform the competition. High performers like JetBlue, Southwest, GE, Starbucks and Zappos, have a strong, distinct culture that employees are conscious of and use every day. Leaders need to keep in mind that companies like Pan Am, Eastern Airlines and even Enron had strong cultures in the beginning that ultimately became negative and failed their people.

O: What’s the best way to get your employees to buy into your mission and vision?

AnnR: As I outline in Built on Values, your mission and vision – what I call your values – must be built into every aspect of your business. The easiest way to make them concrete for your employees is to build them into a simple set of metrics that employees can have an impact on.  These can be both corporate dashboard goals and metrics for each division or department of your company. You can then build games and even your reward systems on achieving these values-based metrics.

O:How can I maintain my company culture in the face of crisis?

AnnR: Realize that a positive corporate culture is your best weapon for responding to a crisis. For example, in February 2007, an ice storm kept a plane full of JetBlue passengers on the runway at JFK for ten hours. Just days after the incident, JetBlue introduced a passenger’s bill of rights, the first in the country, offering customers increasing levels of cash compensation based on the length of any flight delay that is the fault of the airline. When we followed up with the passengers who had sat on the plane for ten hours, we found that 80 percent had a favorable opinion of Jet Blue even after that horrible experience and were still flying the airline. Eighty percent. Most of them said it was because of Jet Blue’s honest and transparent response to the situation, which arose from our culture. You may also use a crisis as the opportunity to revitalize your culture. In the face of plummeting performance, Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz closed all his stores for three hours in 2009 so that his people could recommit to living the company’s values and mission.  And look at what his bottom line has done since then.

You can read the rest of this Q&A session on Entrepreneur’s Organization blog.

Today Wayne Turmel talks to author Ann Rhoades about her new book: “Built on Values, Creating an Enviable Culture That Outperforms the Competition”.

• Can you consciously create a culture or is it something that happens by accident?

• How do you decide on your values and how can your company actually stick to them?

-Show Notes-
0:00 Welcome to the show. Today we’re talking about starting a company with values in mind, which puts in mind the RCMP and its founder, George Arthur French. Standards and style either get determined on purpose or they happen in spite of you.

4:25 The quote of the week is from Henry David Thoreau- not one of my favorites but occasionally said something worth hanging onto and he’s a more impressive credit than quoting me….

5:10 Welcome Ann Rhoades to the show. She’s going to talk about building a company on values…but since she helped start Jet Blue she knows a bit about the topic. I’m a bit jaded on the topic so why should we care?

7:15 Ann left SouthWest and helped start JetBlue. How do you go about blue printing your organizations values and the behaviors that exemplify them?

11:00 Hotels and airlines lead the league in complaints and bad experiences so how do you incorporate organizational values into the business plan? Admittedly it doesn’t take much to exceed expectations but you have to try. What do you do when someone just doesn’t fit in?

14:45 What do you do as a manager with something like “safety” as a value. How do you manage to it? It’s all about identifying behaviors then keeping people accountable for it.

18:30 There are real bottom-line results to this theory…. and they’re impressive. What do you do when something bad happens to test the organizations values? Can you recover? Here’s a case study you might not be familiar with but should be.

24:10 How do you identify people who will fit with your organizational values during the interview process instead of getting surprised? It’s all about behavioral interviewing rather than skills interviewing. A players have skills, but that’s not how they get to be A Players.