Values

I have to laugh at our corporate values. As a result of the merger of the two groups, new values needed to be created. Fine, good.

Previous Values :
Professionalism
Sense of partnership
Team spirit
Value creation
Respect for the environment
Ethics

New Values of the combined Group:
Drive / Exigence
Comittment / Engagement
Daring / Audace
Cohesion / Cohésion

These were released 6 months ago and I still cannot help feeling it was a step backwards. Something is definitely lost in translation. Daring? What does that mean? The further definition gives us :

Drive / Exigence : guarantee performance over the long term, for all stakeholders ; efficiency ; innovation. Seriously? You get all of that from ‘drive’?

Commitment / Engagement : development with respect for the planet ; provide essential services for people. Ok, but why not keep it ‘respect for the environment’? From ‘commitment’ I certainly do not think about the trees.

Daring / Audace : live with optimism and build a future with creativity. Huh?

Cohesion / Cohésion : shared spirit of teamwork ; sustainable sources of progress and development. Kind of seems like the catch-all value, the feel good one you have to have even if you don’t define it well.

And then the collateral used for this ... well, that’s an entirely separate story which cracks me up!!! See, the corporate communication group does a great job. But for this, the main image was a group of about 100 people walking in a triangle shape, like an arrow sort of. Of course, on the little postcard we all got, I noticed the details. And the details were that these were stock images! See that guy in the khaki pants and red shirt on the left? Well he’s in khaki pants and a blue shirt on the right! And further back in the same outfit! There are probably at least 10 ‘individuals’ who are repeated – either exactly as is, or just with in different colored shirt or trousers. Unbelievable. So much for creativity. At least originality is not one of the values.

Why do I bring up values that were released 6 months ago? Well, the whole ‘respect for the environment’ thing really gets to me. We’re moving office locations over a span of about 6 weeks (different floors/locations move on different weeks). In preparation there have been bins in the hallways for recycling non-sensitive paper material and other bins for shredding documents. Fine, good.

Well, in these clearly marked ‘paper recycle bins’ there was most definitely :
--sensitive information
--non paper stuff
--perfectly good folders, binders, dividers, etc.

In fact, there were so many perfectly good things in the bin that I was doing my own ‘dumpster diving’ and got a nice new stack of office supplies. Several colleagues were trying to stop me, point me to the supply cabinets. So I said somewhat forcefully and in disbelief, ‘but these are perfectly fine! They are like brand new – this is so wasteful to throw all of this away, no respect for the environment. What values?’ And then I’d walk away with my head held high, basking in my saving of the environment one used folder at a time.