When Values and Policies Collide
Have you ever seen the term ‘values-based policies’? A company using it meant a policy that determined people’s behaviour, for example, a code of conduct. Yet, more broadly, all policies exist to shape and guide activity and decisions. Meaning if your values are genuine, they should form the foundation. Turning values-based policies into policies based on values.
Oh, if simply saying made it so. Now you might choose a different moniker for values. Whatever you call them, they’re guardrails for how you do things. And that role is where values and policies should align but can also collide.
Organisations big and small get buffeted by intersecting forces. Regulatory and legislative landscapes constrain activity and behaviour. People drag their personal ethics and past experiences into the mix. While societal winds shift what’s acceptable.
Beyond a few outliers, for decades, values languished on posters, lurked in strategy decks, and were lip service during hiring spiels. But the stakes have risen, presenting a dilemma. Because putting them to work is complicated.
In a recent article, author Ryan Holiday said, “It is very difficult to go along with policies that compromise your values without becoming compromised.”
He’s referencing the impact of the US president’s executive order to ditch DEI programs. And central to his quip is the pressure policies exert on people to do the wrong thing. Rubbing against their better angels in an existential war of money vs. morals.
Zoom in, and the policies (created and inherited) governing your organisation will likely flout your values in more than a few places. Sometimes that’s outside your control. For example, a value for staying flexible. But you’re in a highly regulated sector layered in bureaucracy. Other times, internal policy choices ran smack into values. Such as a value around respect and policies that decree micromanagement and undermine autonomy.
One organisation I worked with had 55 different, overlapping, and even out-of-date policies! Poor policy hygiene aside, similar-seeming endless lists abound across organisations, with documents governing privacy, communication and financial matters. Yet there is often scant evidence of their values. And I don’t count pastiche references that occasionally pop up.
Like its bedfellow process, policy lurks at the unsexy edges of people’s work, casting a long shadow. So, if you don’t build what matters about how you do things into the documents that govern how it happens, well, get ready to trade peppy people programs for crisis management and steadily eroding value stored in the brand.
Back to Holiday’s sentiment around compromise. Where values are concerned, that’s rarely a good thing. Outside of his egregious experience, people still see and feel “that seems out of sync with what we say” mismatches. Which is one more reason to establish clear “is, isn’t, and goes too far” boundaries for your values.
Compare policy’s stodgy, legalistic language with value’s lofty sentiments and you’re forgiven for missing how much they share.
Both range widely and touch every aspect of your work. Broad yet pointy, they apply to everyone, regardless of role. Yet, they’re both inconvenient in certain situations, often ignored until something causes a complaint and frequently grow musty through disuse.
Which is reason enough to broaden the lens on policy. Blow past adding a sentence to ‘align with values’ and actually do it! And trade ‘values-based' for based on values.
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