The Intangible Factors of your Organisation's Success

Religions and psychologists have been preaching for ages that on the long run, it's not the circumstances, but your beliefs/values that define your life. Values are in fact long standing beliefs, so in the context of this post I use them interchangeably. Values shape our lives - what we believe in defines how we act and what we strive for. Personal values are the main driving forces of our decisions, and they also shape organisational values when people come together to do something for – hopefully – mutual benefit. And vice versa – organisational values usually demand compliance and affect people's actions.

Everyone is talking about sustainability now. But since it became such a buzzword, it's losing is meaning. I want to talk about resilience. Resilience is what your values are driving. Your circumstances may be good or bad, but they are usually not permanent. Resilience (and value mix underlying it) will drag you through the bad time; then the good times will bring their rewards. It is the same for an organisation. Of course business needs money to survive. That's financial sustainability. In our neoclassical economics world, so many things are driven by money, that even environmental protection is driven by it. How much is the solar power business? How painful are the penalties for CO2 emissions? What are the fines for environmental noncompliance? Seems that everything gets measured by money.

However, not everything is so simple. If your employees are driven by money – will it bring money to your business? The research shows that - maybe in a short term. But how amazing it is that dominant financial values in a person usually come together with dishonesty, unsubstantiated risk and other financially damaging behaviors. Maybe, on the long run, your financially driven manager will simply bankrupt your organisation.

And on the other hand, employees with a good balance of environmental and social values are actually good guardians of your financial success. And as an extra benefit are usually much more pleasant people to work with. Now that's about whom to hire. But don't forget that organisational values will change everyone's behavior, even those with a good balance may start behaving like freaks if your organisation promotes it. Research proven :)