A Note on Values

 In my last post I made a comment about engineers '[placing] value in being technically competent'. In the interest of keeping these posts digestible I glossed over this idea to focus on my core point, but I wanted to take a moment now to expand on this idea of 'values'.

What are Values

There are probably entire bookshelves worth of writing on values; how to identify them, how to live them, and more. Rather than give a rigorous survey of all this material, I'll instead try to summarize how I like to think about values, both personally and organizationally. Given our topic, I'd like to draw my definition from a source that holds a lot of value to me personally:

"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" - Matthew 6:21 (NIV)

 I think this does a great job at getting right to the core: wherever you spend your time and money, that is most likely what you value. You can devote hundreds of hours of time discussing, develop the most inspirational values statements, and market them to the ends of the earth, but when the chips are down and money (treasure) is on the table, the choices you make will show you what you truly value.

Now where things can get tricky is that some values will be more fundamental than others. I believe it is entirely possible to hold multiple conflicting values, although given enough contention of resources one will have to win out over the other. This can make it difficult to suss out what things are merely 'important' vs. what things are truly 'values'. I like the way the Agile Manifesto lays it out "That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more."

Something I also like to consider when identifying values is that they should not only be descriptive (tell us how things are), but also prescriptive (tell us how we will respond). This is especially important for organizations as it is easy to fall into the trap of vague, overly broad values statements that are never really applicable in day to day operations and offer no guardrails or guarantees about future behavior.

The last point on values I'll call out is that people and organizations grow and change, so it is very likely that their values will as well. I think it's important to acknowledge 'aspirational values' that help define where you want to be, even if you aren't there yet. It is equally important to periodically reassess values and determine which, if any, have fallen away under new circumstances. 

Why Should You Care 

 For many engineers it can be easy to brush off discussions around values, especially in the context of business. Most would agree it is not that values themselves are meaningless, it's that so often those values statements are at best vague and at worst completely misaligned. This disconnect between words and actions is what can turn off so many to what should be an important exercise. 

The problem is this, whether you want to acknowledge them or not, every single person and organization already has a core set of values. These values, spoken or unspoken, intentional or accidental, will underpin nearly every major decision and action.

So if you are finding yourself constantly battling headwinds at work, or never quite to the place you thought you would be in life, or just not having the impact you thought you would, then I would highly recommend taking some time looking for possible impedance mismatches between your values, your actions, and the values and actions of those around you. Being intentional about our values, and making sure our actions align with those values, is absolutely critical if we ever want to have any hope of getting to where we want to go. 

What Should You Do

There is a lot of great material already out there on how to go about defining and developing actually good values statements. I think the critical first step, the one that doesn't get talked about as much, or practiced nearly as often, is that of just being aware of the values around us. The challenge is that values by themselves are not something we can see, or touch, or hear; they only ever manifest externally through our choices and actions. To really be good at identifying values, we have to get good at being aware of these choices and from them, deducing what they say about the chooser's values. 

This, like most things in life, takes practice. I'm not saying you need to go run off this second and develop a personal values statement, or even try and convince your organization that they need to totally revamp theirs. But I would recommend the next time you find yourself making a hard choice, a large purchase, or add up where you spent most of your time throughout the week, think about what those choices may be saying about your values. 

Practicing this within organizations is even trickier. The lines from actions to values can be obscured by competing interests, legacy systems, and incomplete information on your part. I recommend starting by looking at an organization's budget as probably the most direct link to their values as it is the most concrete statement of where the leaders want to spend the limited amount of money they have. Some less concrete things you can observe in an organization include what actions get tolerated, how conflict tends to get resolved, and where leaders focus most of their time and energy.

By intentionally building this awareness, you'll gain a deeper perspective of how these underlying values drive the surface level behaviors we see every day. Understanding these values will better equip you to find solutions and paths that are more inherently viable. For personal values, this awareness can help drive more consistent behavior that is better aligned with what you really want. And as that awareness extends beyond just your own values, you'll start to see how previously confusing or frustrating behaviors caused by misalignment make sense in a way that they didn't before.