The Salvation Army is often described as a mission-driven organization – an organization that takes its foundational values and vision seriously. This is a good thing; it’s an appropriate and honourable labelling of our place in the world.

So when we take the time to wrestle with words and craft a set of core values, it’s an investment of mission. Taking the time and energy to find the right language is worth it. Values reflect and shape organizational culture. They define what we should look like, both internally and externally, when we’re doing that important work of mission.

Those words — the core values — have three primary purposes:

  • to provide guidance for behaviour,
  • to provide direction in decision making, and
  • to provide guidance in planning strategy and setting direction for the future.

Values are important in any organization, but in a faith-based organization they’re very often the marker by which the organization is evaluated. Simply by virtue of our faith affiliation, the bar is raised.

“As a staff member or volunteer of a not-for-profit organization, you are held to a higher standard of conduct and an increasingly high standard of performance as compared with your peers in business or government. As a staff member or volunteer of a faith-based organization, you are held to an extremely high standard of conduct and an increasingly high standard of performance.” (Peter Brinckerhoff examines this concept in his book, Faith Based Management).

So the core values must permeate every aspect of an organization, and it’s the responsibility of leadership and management to ensure that happens. The dots have to connect. If they don’t, we risk both operation and reputation, and that’s a vulnerable position. The values have to translate into behaviour, for everyone involved in the operation. Values and behaviours are intertwined, so if the core values aren’t aligned with all aspects of organizational behaviour, it’s a disconnect that will be very real and very limiting. It should be evident for anyone who interacts with an organization as to what drives its operation. If this isn’t compatible with the core values, it’s a red flag that some important work needs to be done. A well-aligned, or congruent, organization has behaviour or practice that reflects its articulated values.

This alignment, or congruence, doesn’t happen by accident. It requires discussion and integration of values and ethics in all aspects of an organization’s operation. It is critical that all staff and volunteers not only understand our core values but also understand how each one of them plays a role in ensuring they are ambassadors of those values in everything they do. The core values of our organization should provide a road map to organizational behaviour for all persons involved – officers and volunteers, managers and employees.

It is clearly more important to put our organizational values into practice than to discuss them. However, dialogue is necessary for the following reasons:

  • Based on the same information, two people can interpret the facts differently and make different decisions. Talking about values enables us to discover other interpretations of the facts.
  • Dialogue on values helps raise our awareness of the impact our personal values can have on our professional decisions.
  • Values and ethics are important factors in building and maintaining the public’s confidence in The Salvation Army. Values and ethics are a key factor in the quality of governance, leadership and management.
  • We work in an environment that is constantly evolving and in which there are many internal and external pressures, such as limited resources, the transfer of more responsibilities, the critical eye of the general public and the media. Our values must inform our actions since our values provide us with guidelines in this increasingly complex operational environment.
  • When we make decisions, we are often required to choose among plausible solutions. We must be able to demonstrate that our decisions are always based on solid values.
  • For new employees who do not have as much experience as more senior employees, our core values should serve as reference points that help them make decisions.

References:

Building a Values-Driven Organization: A Whole System Approach to Cultural Change, Richard Barrett (2006)

Executive Values, Kurt Senske (2003)

Both books, along with many similar resources, are available for loan from the Ethics Centre library.