Page 125 - MS Year in Review 2020

THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM: AN INVALID

APPROACH TO CREATING CORPORATE VALUES

STATEMENTS

Unfortunately, the problem at IBM was that its culture was based on an “’Apriori’

approach” to culture creation. The term “Apriori” refers to “relating to or denoting
reasoning or knowledge which proceeds from theoretical deduction rather than
from observation or experience.

Virtually all culture statements I have seen are attempts based upon ad

hoc statements of core values that have “face validity” (that is, intuitively “make
sense”) to organizations. These statements of corporate core values typically
consist of lists of key words or phrases that seem reasonable or meaningful. For

example, one company stated that “our core values are ‘professionalism,’ ‘integrity,’
‘hard work,’ ‘teamwork’, and ‘results.’” Another used phrases such as “doing more
with less,” “the best idea wins,” and “working managers.”

Virtually all of these examples (while well intended) are based upon an overly

simplistic approach to developing culture statements.

Even a very successful organization such as Netflix is a good example of this
problem. Netflix states that these are its seven values:

 Values are what we Value
 High Performance

 Freedom & Responsibility
 Context, not Control
 Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled

 Pay Top of Market
 Promotions & Development

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