We Have Shared Vision and Values!

A CEO assured me that his four-hundred person organization had a shared vision and a common set of values. This had been the first step in his revitalization plan and had been completed, in his mind, several months previously. Management had created the vision and values statement and distributed it and discussed it using various communication channels. Curious, I spoke to a few random people in the organization and asked about it.

Two people had no idea what I was asking about, even after I showed them the various communications on the topic. One person knew about the vision but a little discussion showed that they had actually interpreted it almost exactly opposite to how the CEO had explained it to me. Two others knew about it, but cynically explained that it didn't have anything to do with how the company actually operated. Three people professed to be aligned with the vision and values, yet, to my way of thinking, interpreted them in quite different ways. While this was a pretty informal and casual survey, I saw NO evidence that the company shared a common vision and values.

Especially for something as important as vision and values, communication is so much more than just distributing information.