Have you the cultural values for OKR success?

Universal truth

Businesses that are thriving can often be seen to approach the challenge of people, management and operations in similar ways. Here are a few of the universal truths of performance:

• Knowing and serving the customer needs to be at the heart of everything you do
• Employees and their ability to perform is the key to customer success and happiness
• Company values and culture are essential to the growth of people and revenue
• How well you attract, develop and retain talented people is a leading indicator of future performance
• Measuring what matters helps the company, teams and individuals succeed
• Being ambitious means we are more likely to achieve more
• Teams outperform individuals
• Transparency and trust helps to create alignment and improves teamwork

People are a strength and potential weakness

The dominant thread in those truths is people. They are wonderful, brilliant, inspiring, kind, funny and agents for good.

For example, being accountable and responsible for performance comes with lots of psychological baggage. Fear of failure and the consequences of failure are the most common.

What does failure as an employee mean?

It depends on the situation, but failure is often associated with not achieved a goal. The perceived future consequences of this could be that you look bad in front of colleagues, your professional reputation is damaged, you get reprimanded, not promoted, or even fired.

What does not help for some people is that our core human programming is commonly biased towards self promotion and survival. Evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins in the book ‘The Selfish Gene’, referred to ‘selfish’ as the behaviour that drives humans to fight for and promote our survival without necessarily promoting the survival of the organism, group or even species.

Are cultural values the solution to issues like fear and selfishness, as well as being the framework for improved performance?

5 Cultural values that are consistent with OKR Success

Here are some ideas for company values that can be communicated and lived.

Are they similar to those in your company?

Do you and your colleagues know your values and are your values lived and enforced?

 

People First

We are here to make our customers and our colleagues lives better.

 

Don’t be a dick. Wheaton Law

To be able to listen - really, wholly passively, self-effacingly listen - without presupposing, classifying, improving, controverting, evaluating, approving or disapproving, without dueling with what is being said, without rehearsing the rebuttal in advance, without free-associating to portions of what is being said so that succeeding portions are not heard at all - such listening is rare. Abraham Maslow

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. Harry S. Truman

 

Transparent

We are transparent about where we are, where we plan to get be, and how we are going to get there.

 

By recording your dreams and goals on paper, you set in motion the process of becoming the person you most want to be. Put your future in good hands—your own. Mark Victor Hansen

The thing about goals is that living without them is a lot more fun, in the short run. It seems to me, though, that the people who get things done, who lead, who grow and who make an impact… those people have goals. Seth Godin

A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity. Dalai Lama

Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people. Spencer Johnson

 

Courageous

We do not fear failure, failure is how we practice to be the best at what we do.

 

The great danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark. Michelangelo

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. Robert F. Kennedy

Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming. John Wooden

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. Theodore Roosevelt

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure. Colin Powell

You have to set goals that are almost out of reach. If you set a goal that is attainable without much work or thought, you are stuck with something below your true talent and potential. Steve Garvey

There are risks in every action. Every success has the seed of some failure. Liz Wiseman

 

Coachable

Our ability to be individually vulnerable and coachable is our collective strength.

 

The highest quality of thinking cannot emerge without learning. Learning can’t happen without mistakes. Liz Wiseman

To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength. Crissi Jami

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence. Robert Frost

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. Benjamin Franklin

 

Team First

We put the company and team before ourselves so that we all might thrive.

 

The Diminisher is a Micromanager who jumps in and out. The Multiplier is an Investor who gives others ownership and full accountability. Liz Wiseman

The only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is their willingness to have their beliefs modified by new facts. Sam Harris

Teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability. Patrick Lencioni

Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results. Andrew Carnegie

Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life. Amy Poehler

It isn’t how much you know that matters. What matters is how much access you have to what other people know. It isn’t just how intelligent your team members are; it is how much of that intelligence you can draw out and put to use. Liz Wiseman