Most business books that discuss the importance of values for financial success tend to be overly preachy, even woolly-minded. This is not the case with VALUES BASED ORGANIZATIONS: Aligning Culture and Strategy by leadership coach Dr. Thomas Epperson. This 183-page book is divided into eight chapters, explaining what Values Based Organizations (VBOs) are and the processes for building them. Dr. Epperson shows leaders how to construct organizations “whose cultures support their strategies, and whose strategies inspire their cultures.”
VBOs, he explains, are aligned in their strategy, culture, and processes, with employees at all levels pursuing the organization’s goals. The key to this is Epperson’s Five Practices, which are: 1) Take stock, 2) Commit to Why and How, 3) Align Action, 4) Champion Values Based Leadership, and 5) Engage Everyone.
He adds, “The Five Practices are meant to be simple; applying them consistently is hard […] If these practices were easy, every leader would do them, and in my experience few do.” This also distinguishes VALUES BASED ORGANIZATIONS from most business books, which tend to gloss over the difficulty of implementing even the best practices. By contrast, Dr. Epperson writes that organizations that succeed in aligning the five practices are virtually unicorns and usually fail several times before getting it right. The components of VBOs are their mission (reason for existing), values (shared beliefs and assumptions), vision (goal for the next few years), strategy (plan for following its mission and achieving its vision), and processes (the procedures for achieving the preceding four).
Epperson rejects the populist notion of companies driving change from the bottom up. In 25 years of consulting with hundreds of organizations, he claims, “I have never experienced change succeed without starting at the senior-most levels of an organization.” At the same time, he insists that change isn’t possible unless leadership respects and gets support from the lowest-level employees. That requires getting reliable feedback from all stakeholders. “Most people are nice and will not tell you to your face that your baby is ugly,” writes Epperson. “But they will tell everybody else.”
In every chapter, Epperson goes through the process for developing and installing a strategic plan. The key, in his experience, is alignment between the components, which starts with a group of senior leaders getting on the same page (since this makes a buy-in more likely). As he writes, “Every organization is the people business […] relationships are the most powerful force in organizations.” In the end, VALUES BASED ORGANIZATIONS shows leaders how to build those relationships while never pretending that knowledge is enough in itself.
Dr. Thomas Epperson’s VALUES BASED ORGANIZATIONS: Aligning Culture and Strategy is a comprehensive and rigorous analysis of how values (and, by extension, people) are the keys to a successful and thriving organization. Dr. Epperson’s principles can be used by firms, non-profits, or any other kind of organization.
~ Kevin Baldeosingh for IndieReader