Ben and I started working with Apple earlier this year. During our first meeting with them last year we asked about their values - they have just one: “Being Apple”.
Not only is this a bit ambiguous - they do nothing to qualify or specifty it. Although this may cause problems with performance management, “Sorry, you’re just not Apple enough,” having the confidence to be ambiguous about values is the stuff of genius - Steve Jobs you are my hero - at last an organisation that understands what values really are!
A value is tacit, you feel it, it drives behaviour and we will all attribute a slightly different meaning to a value. As an example, let’s imaging you had a value of ‘integrity’ - it’s a great value, but how could you possibly describe it as a behaviour? If someone were in a meeting demonstrating integrity - how would you know? Any evaluation of this nature would be ridiculously subjective and corrupted by your opinion of the person. To specify the value as a behavioural description takes the value away from the value. Values are ‘big picture’ if you provide detailed descriptions they are no longer values - they are instructions.
When you go into the office at Apple - you can feel what ‘Being Apple’ is from the environment and the behaviour of people around you. Environment and behaviour of others influences behaviour far more than any carefully constructed words ever could….
Ben and I have developed a facilitation game for helping individuals to genuinely connect with values. It’s featured in our new book called ‘Feedback or Criticism?’ which is released next month. You can download a preview copy from the noggin website.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Daryll,
Enjoyed the article.
Then got a little confused and curious. Isn’t ‘Being Apple’, at Identitly level in Dilts Logical Levels? Perhaps asking what is important (valued) about being Apple, might elicit the values behind the identity! Perhaps even asking ‘what is NOT being Apple about’?
My thought was that when I ask someone what their values are and they were to say, “being Great”, or “being Successful”, I would ask, Great at what, or Successful at what, and what’s important about that?
Being Marks & Spencer…. hmmmm…. doesn’t have the same ring to it really
All the best,
Chaz.
Nice Chaz:
I guess that ‘being apple’ could be placed at any logical level - it’s arbitrary - like an adjective - you could pop it in at any level… Depends how the individual is attributing meaning to it and where they place it.
For a bit of fun, Quote Dilts’s logical levels to Grinder and see what happens - he considers it a great example of an un-ecological content imposition as logical levels will vary from one individual to another - and should be elicited rater than imposed.
Is spirituality above identity - I dunno - depends who you are - I’m not sure I have either of them…