Values and Principles

Principles are external natural laws, that is, “laws whose content are set by nature and that therefore have validity everywhere” (Natural Law, 2010, para. 1). Stephen Covey (2010) suggests, principles are “universal and timeless,” (para. 3) applying to everyone, everywhere, all the time. The word “values” is often used interchangeably with principles. They are, however very different. Values are defined as “Worth in usefulness or importance to the possessor; utility or merit… a quality considered worthwhile or desirable” (2010, para. 1). In the context of this paper, values are “…internal and subjective. Covey proclaims that values govern people’s behavior, but principles ultimately determine the consequences” (2010, para. 3). There may be social input components to values, but values are ultimately personal.

That we are meaning driven beings is less in dispute than why we are meaning focused, even meaning obsessed at times. Frankl noted that “meaning differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour” (as cited in Viktor Frankl: A Man’s Search for Meaning, 2010, para. 15). Whatever the origins of the human desire for obtaining meaning, it is clear that the desire exists. We must, however, be clear that we don’t jump to conclusion and enthusiastically toss all motivations and desires into the search for meaning basket. As Frankl and others point out, the desire to live a “worthwhile” life is not the same thing as striving for a “meaningful” life. However varied and unique the desire for meaning in life, there are other driving interests of fulfillment. This is important to recognize as we attempt to define the key principles of meaning making. And thus “knowing that meaningfulness analytically concerns a variable and gradient final good in a person's life that is conceptually distinct from happiness, rightness, and worthwhileness [among other motivators and goals] provides a certain amount of common ground” (Meaning of Life, 2007, para. 13) for the discovery of guiding principles.

Meaning Making Leadership

Over the course of the next few blogs, we will touch on the concept of Meaning Making Leadership. In pursuit of sustainability and profitability, companies create change through downsizing, attempting to do more with less, demand deciphering and implementation of new technologies, and introduce a host of other stressor and destabilizers. Employees at all levels of the enterprise attempt to “make sense” of these challenges and changes in their pursuit of meaning and meaning’s precipitates including higher productivity, better decision making, claiming responsibility for actions, happiness, understanding, and acceptance. Leadership’s principle purpose is to make meaning and to guide others to make meaning for themselves. This and future posts will provide a list of principles and meaning determinants that, if employed in the workplace, will stimulate increased meaning, more productive employees, and the foundation for a high performance organization.

Robert Richer in his Doctoral Dissertation, Meaning-Making by Involuntarily Reassigned Employees http://dspace.wrlc.org/bitstream/1961/120/5/dissertation.pdf noted, “Meaning making or sensemaking is what employees do as they navigate through reassignment activities as organizations balance workforce and business demands” (p.1) such as profitability and sustainability. “In this knowledge era both individual and collective meaning making have been identified as important to the success of organizations” (p.2). Although meaning appears to be a critical factor in business success, the key factor of meaning is rarely if ever mentioned or considered in making either strategic or day-to-day decisions. This may be because meaning appears too “fluffy,” too hard to measure, not critical to success, or is simply rejected outright as not important. Alternate metrics (e.g. productivity, sick leave levels, clicks on a website) appear to deliver sufficient understanding of success that it becomes a rational business decision to avoid the meaning quagmire. In response, MyKnowledgeCoach identifies probable meaning making principles and determinants at the leader’s disposal and which are key to the leader’s reach and ability to guide the organization to long-term success. In the next blog we will begin discussing what some of these meaning making tools are.