UK Bribery Act

Building a values-based culture means imposing fewer rules and relying less on compliance activities. This means trusting more.

Building a values-based culture means imposing fewer rules and relying less on compliance activities. This means trusting more. In a values-based culture, conduct is not a result of a matrix of rules and controls, but is guided by a commonly shared, but internal, sense of the right thing to do. The necessary corollary to letting go of rules and controls is embracing more uncertainty and a confidence that values will do the work. Trust is the coin of the realm in a values-based culture.

Trust has its own consequences. A more trusting organization takes more risk and motivates its people to take more risk. But taking more risk is, let’s face it, risky. If an organization motivates and nurtures the right values, the overall risk of misconduct should decrease, but there will always be those who will take advantage of any absence of rules or compliance-related activity. This is a risk worth taking, to gain the benefits a values-based culture can bring. There is, after all, an optimal degree of compliance.

In fact, the riskiness that comes with a self-governing, values-based culture can have dramatic benefits to the organization. The employees in a self-governing culture will be motivated to more risk taking, and consequently to more innovation, precisely because their conduct is not so specifically proscribed. Behavior that derives from values is riskier, but ultimately more innovative, and innovation is something no company can have too much of.

Extending trust will gain you trust.

This reflect business realities, anticipate issues and promote appropriate values. To do this, there must be more acceptance of the risk that something might go wrong, more dialogue, and a mutual understanding of the right thing to do. There is no need for belt and suspenders when the one wearing the pants had a say in choosing the belt and understands what it’s for.

Culture building is not easy; doing all those things—incentives, communication, hiring, evaluation, planning and the rest—differently is a communal effort for the organization as a whole. The ability to make these meaningful changes in the organization ultimately will derive from the reservoir of goodwill that trust engenders.

Getting to where you want to go means cultivating the right behavior: enduring sustainable behavior that furthers the mission and significance of the company. The path to significance moves away from a mindset of compliance to a mentality of culture building.