Technology
Setting the stage
How to model the values you want to see in your employees
By Erik Cassano
Smart Business Dallas | March 2009
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Abid Abedi
founder and chairman, Adea Inc.
If you work for Adea Inc., Abid Abedi’s vision and values are all around you.
Abedi believes in managing by setting an example, and that’s exactly what the founder and chairman of Adea — an information technology consulting firm that generated $52 million in revenue in fiscal 2008 — does for his employees, with help from his management team. With every move he and his team make, Abedi reinforces the values he wants his employees to embrace and models the behavior he wants to see them exhibit.
“There are some things that cannot be taught overnight, but through association with people for a long period of time, people self-select themselves to align with your style or select themselves out,” Abedi says.
Smart Business spoke with Abedi about how to set your own example for your employees to follow.
Remain consistent.
When you have more and more people who believe in the vision, the more people believe in the values system, the quicker it trickles down.
You can change a lot about an organization, but you cannot change the culture of an organization. The reason is that vision and values tend to remain the same with the same leadership in place. You will have a continuous culture and core values in place. But when you have changes at the leadership level, that’s when you run into problems because the people don’t know what values system to follow.
But having a common tenure at the leadership level tends to repeatedly drive the same vision and the same values. That’s the best way to have people remain focused. If the leadership believes the same values, that moves throughout the organization.
The best way to tell if the organizational values are reaching everyone is through retention. In India, where the average industry turnover is 20 or 30 percent, we had less than 2 percent turnover. The rate of turnover tends to be indicative of the fact that the vision and values are understood all the way down to the bowels of the organization. People tend to stay longer if the values system is similar to their own and if they share and believe in the vision.
Unfortunately, in the society we live in, we spend more time at work than with our families. These days, you spend 50 to 60 hours a week either commuting or staying at the office.
You might spend three hours per weekday with your kids or family, maybe 35 hours a week. But you’re spending 50 to 60 hours a week at work. So it needs to be a place you look forward to coming each day.
Your values system cannot be radically different to that of the organization. You won’t be able to put up with 50 to 60 hours of that each week. If you’re not in line with the vision and values of the organization, it’s going to be very difficult to achieve peak performance, and you self-select yourself out of the organization.
That is why turnover is an indicator of whether the vision and values are reaching everyone.
