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Telling lies at work

Nice posting from the Jim Donovan (CEO of Fronde) regarding openness and honesty:
If you don’t deep-down do ‘openness’ and ‘honesty’, you’d be better off not claiming otherwise - you’ll be reviled the minute you show your true colours. Openness and honesty have to come from deep-seated personal values that are lived and demonstrated.


I agree. Sitting around in nice warm (!) offices pontificating with your work peers about how the organisation values are so cool and will lead to greater profit with chirpier minions staff will not achieve much (possibly a loss of respect from those that get to hear what you're doing).

Do it. Be it. Model it for others. People need to see a behaviour that directly reflects the values (whatever they might be) that the organisation claims to be.

In the example at my work we have values of 'trust' and 'openness'. One of the ways that I am keen to have those values enacted is to remove the convoluted publishing process we have for the intranet (why do people do that). I am endeavouring to move towards a much more agile* beasty by making it a Wiki based area. Then we'll have to 'trust' the staff and hopefully engender a lot more 'openness'.

There will have to be a large amount of the other 'value' (of 5) that we hold near and dear - courage.

* Agile is something that Fronde (and I) espouse as a far more natural way of delivering the outcomes a business wants. It does however challenge those that work in a more fixed, command-and-control and hierarchical manner.

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