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information we value the highest. The emotional currency we use to compare the value of, and choose between, things as different as people, financial rewards, achievements and work-life balance is our shared system of personal values. Universally held, basic emotional concepts regulating our enthusiasm for change (high to low) and how we exploit or protect ourselves from change (competitive or cooperative), is a system first codified by Prof. Shalom Schwartz in 1992. While we share a common system of values, just as we share a common physiology, the possible differences between us are as numerous and significant as the differences in our health, appearance and other physical attributes. Our values reflect how our brains process information in routine business-related, decision-making, as much as they do in matters of ethics, with which they are more commonly associated.


Previous research shows values to be the strongest predictor of leadership capability. Those with ‘self-transcending’ value sets, i.e. people who hold such cooperative values as being broad minded, honest and forgiving as the most important, have the greatest transformational leadership potential, and those with ‘self-enhancing’ value sets, i.e. people who hold such competitive values as social recognition, authority and wealth as being relatively more important, have significantly less transformational leadership potential; leaders with this value set are significantly more likely to be transactional. All the values in the Schwartz system are positive; honesty is a cooperative value but dishonesty isn’t a competitive value. However, a competitive value such as ambition negatively correlates with honesty because, when someone fears that honesty may not best serve their ambitions, they may - as many politicians are prone to do - avoid the truth, put a spin on it or, as a last resort, lie. The Schwartz system of values, as interpreted in Dominant Needs Analysis (DNA), being used to analyse the values of organisations in an ongoing research project with Royal Holloway University’s Psychology Department, enables the application of the latest findings in neuroscience and evolutionary systems theory to better understand employee psychology and Organisational development. In keeping with theoretical expectations it has been found that the values promoting competitive attitudes and transactional leadership (that frustrate cooperation and transformational leadership) preferentially flourish in large organisations. The competitive values promote cognitive biases that become increasingly counterproductive in a fast-evolving business environment. Large organisations, intent on maintaining order and consistency while hitting performance targets, are inclined to develop slightly conservative cultures dominated by the competitive values that promote transactional leadership but actively frustrate agility. They do so by attraction, selection and attrition: people are attracted to organisations that fit their values; organisations select employees who fit them; and those who do not fit the organisation end up


WE EACH


STEER OURSELVES THROUGH THE MAZE OF LIFE BY CONSCIOUSLY AND


UNCONSCIOUSLY WEIGHING UP THE


INFORMATION COMING OUR WAY AND


PLOTTING OUR COURSE BASED ON THE


INFORMATION WE VALUE THE HIGHEST


leaving it. In pursuit of increased agility and developing transformational leadership, qualities that contribute to Seligman’s notion of ‘positive institutions’, the default strategies of those with competitive value sets tend to revolve around direct approaches, such as incentivising ‘desirable behaviours’. The result being organisations and leaders that superficially look the part but lack the essential qualities to drive innovation, high ethical standards, sustainability and authenticity. People with cooperative value sets envision building a better world by doing things in radically different ways; generating profit as a by-product. The success of organisations led by such individuals is predicated on an innate desire to promote: the sharing of information, collaborative endeavour, personal freedom, nurturing, the intrinsic joy of the work and treating the client or customer as ‘one of us’. Such organisations outcompete those built on competitive values, which suffer from internal competition and can all too easily forget they only exist to serve the wider interests of society through satisfying the needs of their customers and clients. The organisations most likely to prosper in the VUCA world are those that compete to maximise cooperation with their customers and clients, not compete to maximise their profits, and those constantly envisioning ways in which they can better contribute to maximising the well-being of all those affected by their activities, rather than seeking to protect and grow market share. New agile businesses, set up by individuals with cooperative value sets, are increasingly likely to rise up to positions of dominance in every sector. However, existing large organisations can become more agile and develop greater transformational capability, but not by simply trying to replicate the behaviours of more agile organisations. They have to change fundamentally via radically new, values-informed recruitment, staff development and Organisational strategies.


The good news is that, while deeply-rooted, personal values can change; there is evidence that socialisation, education and targeted interventions can achieve this. Also, with suitable Organisational development, differently motivated people can contribute more fully to agile initiatives. The bad news is, as Anthony Jenkins - ex CEO of Barclays - says: “doing the ‘same-old’ but a bit better, won’t cut it any longer”. If reliance on the ‘reassuringly familiar’ or ‘proven winning formulas’ remains the preferred approach, while history will almost certainly record how collective o rganisational culture evolved over the next ten years or so, this will have happened through natural selection, i.e. by extinction and replacement.


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SEPTEMBER 2016 thehrdirector 29


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