We are all standing on the shoulders of giants

While we’ve been focused on addressing behavioral patterns of organizations, the world has become appropriately consumed with its collective response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Its critical we all do our part to contain the outbreak by modifying our individual and group behaviors - social distancing, washing our hands, etc.. We should also continue preparing for when the virus has run its course - perhaps a bit more enlightened about the outcomes of our patterns of behavior and to revisit how core principles may have influenced our response to and readiness to address such a situation. The virus will run its course. We will resume running our organizations, doing business, and pursuing our missions, but the reflection on our collective principles will be an ongoing requirement.

Is there an example where founders of a health technology company are not aligned on whether or not their app should be free or fee-based?   Could an entertainment company have avoided a lawsuit for crowdsourcing confidential data via what they thought was a randomized algorithm to share viewing preferences?  Would a plant-based meat producer have chosen a different early-stage investor had they known the financial provider had a long-standing history of investing in companies that deployed animal testing?  These are just a few examples where if enterprises had a pragmatic methodology for guiding principled decision-making, they could avoid potential organizational conflicts, customer outrage, partner misalignment, and/or public scandals just to name a few very possible unintended consequences.  One does not need to think far beyond Facebook’s acceptance of Russian purchases of political advertising or Uber’s management scandals to appreciate how a well-communicated set of core values could lead to more desirable outcomes.

We are seeking to identify, these types of situations on a broad scale, across sizes, stages of organizations and even at the project team level. At the heart of the COR (Culture and Organizational Resolve) methodology is a dynamic and growing repository of anecdotal information, scenarios, and shared experiences that have led to key lessons learned. If your principles have been challenged in a way that caused you to ask yourself what’s the “right or ethical” thing to do, then we’d appreciate talking with you to document what happened, what you went well or not so well, and the important lessons organizational leadership took away from the experience. We want other people to learn from you and you to learn from others. Let us know if you’d like to be contacted to join the COR community. 

Our outreach includes start-ups, corporate centers of innovation, B-Corporations, members of the Business Roundtable and other organizations that have expressed purpose as fundamental to their mission. It’s a unique opportunity for the business community to participate in a bottom-up process demonstrating their commitment beyond proclamation to the execution of these concepts. 

Informing the methodology with these real-world examples enables us to highlight the existence or all too often the lack of a principled decision-making framework and how the resulting outcomes impact the breadth of stakeholders. Collecting data from multiple sources will establish a dynamic ecosystem feeding an open repository with a rich and varied collection of relatable lessons learned. Organizations of all sizes and stages can then deploy our methods and tools with the confidence of applied experience.  

COR is being developed with the explicit objective of providing new enterprises, existing organizations and project teams the resources necessary to execute on their principles by integrating them into every day functions and tasks.  Ultimately the resources we are targeting for delivery include workshops, curriculum, books, tools and articles that we anticipate will position COR as a complement to and as integrated and valued in organizations as methodologies such as LEAN and AGILE. 

While non-prescriptive, self-reinforcing, comprehensive and continuous, the COR methodology will provide organizations a framework to ensure principled direction across all operational functions (e.g. developing products and services, hiring and interacting with employees, corporate governance, HR practices and external partner/customer alignment) taking into account all stakeholders and promoting an alignment of values.  This methodology is being introduced on the heels of the efforts to change corporate purpose as addressed in our last blog, but beyond citing the needs for purpose,  this effort will make the alignment of business and purpose actionable. 

If you have not already been contacted by our team and wish to participate in discussing cases that could help inform the methodology, please let us know by completing this simple form. It provides us some basic background giving us context for your contribution. We appreciate your willingness to participate and interest in being part of our growing COR community.