Travelling through Russia can get tough. A few years ago I was standing in a long queue for a train ticket. At a certain moment the lady behind the counter stood up, arranged her hair and closed the desk. I got mad! I had been standing for almost 4 hours! It was almost my turn! This was not the first time during my trip; once again I fell victim of something euphemistically called the ‘technical break’. These breaks come unannounced and feel like a nationwide conspiracy by the Russian Railways to discourage their costumers of using their service.

having business values is different than living them

To avoid such behaviour of their employees, modern companies introduce business values. I checked their website, and the Russian Railways have as value a ‘respectful and caring attitude to people’. In my view this comes awfully close to customer satisfaction. And this shows that having business values is something totally different than living them. There was no glimpse of respect and care in the way my fellow travellers and I were treated.

Typically business values are decided by the top and implemented by the middle management with the help of trainers. But this leads to a buy-in deficiency. Forcing your employees to behave in a given way sows the seeds for ‘technical breaks’. And the more you force, the more ‘technical breaks’ you will get. The price of this recklessness can be high. Not only will costumers run away, but also employee satisfaction could drop to a lethal level. Like it was the case at France Télécom in 2009.

Implementing business values from the bottom

So, business values should be implemented from the bottom. But how? Let’s first be straight, a true bottom-up approach comes at a price. As manager you will, to a great extent, have to let go the control over how the values will be implemented by your staff. But you should give the framework. If customer satisfaction is to be a core business value, than tell them so. But leave them the freedom to make sense of the values in close dialogue with you.

This dialogue should be done in a safe participative space where bottom and top meet. The issue at stake is the day-to-day implementation of the business values and is of equal importance for the management (they want it) and the staff (they need to do it).

Crucial for the success is a participative space: it should promote an open discussion and exchange of ideas between the different hierarchical layers to let a consensus emerge on the implementation of the values. Such a space is best organised and lead by an external facilitator. It usually requires a well-prepared 1 or 2 days intensive meeting with staff and management. In the case of a big crowd (over several 100 participants) or great geographical spreading, the space can be layered into several partly overlapping meetings.

And what about the ‘train-the-trainer’ method? In the method above there is no need to train trainers as everyone is involved in creating the business values. It’s yours as management and as staff to figure out how to implement them. So there is no need for experts or trainers to tell you how to live the values. And because it’s yours, the business values will stick within the organisation.