The way values are set and said is of paramount importance.

1. Articulation of Values

2. Content of Values

3. The way they are put across.

Point 1,2, and 3 are the most important ways when it comes to making sure that the company's values are properly entrenched into the employees.


They bring across the ideas of the management to the lower levels. These ideas are however, fragile and vulnerable, thus they have to be diffused via softer means.


What do we mean by softer means you might ask.


Basically, it means that we have to put idea and values across via actions, not just merely through the usage of words. Even so, most employees are long cynical and skeptical of the way managers put across ideas for they know that it is only momentarily.


After a while, their enthusiasm will soon run out and it will be back to the old authoritarian system where the employees have no say. That is when the value system starts to backfire.


Hence, consistency in actions plays a pivotal role. It takes pigheaded discipline and immense understanding to be successful in the planting of the values into the employees.


There are some very famous examples where companies have successfully implanted the values into the employees.


We have Frito-Lay with their 99% service level, Johnson & Johnson with their quality stories that are passed down from posterities to posterities, and of course the innovation stories from 3M, etc.


Values are definitely not easy to inculcate in the employees but so long as both parties are mutually willing to give it a shot. Anything can be done!