Vision and Values 67there was a problem at all, though most people were clear
about what was wrong. The problem was how to establish a
direction to put it right.
The company needed to be innovative in its chosen niche
in the media market, but innovation was scarce. There were
some innovative individuals, but they felt isolated, as there
was no support for an innovative culture, although (para-
doxically) innovation was highly valued.
The main difficulty was that there was a low level of col-
laboration between different parts of the organization.
Typically, one company would ask for information or ser-
vices from another, but communication was poor, messages
were unclear and often they did not get what they wanted, so
they gave up on the formal channels and a whole informal
way of getting things done developed that bypassed the
normal management procedures. These informal channels
did not work very well either and actually guaranteed that
poor communication would continue, because it was not
supposed to exist, so was covered up and the underlying
problem was never addressed. Everybody just made do the
best they could while complaining vociferously. Also, in des-
peration, companies went outside the group for material
and ideas, because they were tired of waiting for them. The
company which was supposed to supply these then com-
plained that it was being bypassed. One of our tasks was to
convince both companies that they had colluded (uninten-
tionally) in producing a situation that did not suit either.
We set about working systematically to establish a vision,
by asking the key questions. First we established some core
shared business values: integrity, innovation, openness and
commitment to excellence. These are by no means unusual
- many businesses have the same core shared values, but they
will mean something different to each business because
every business will put them into practice a little differently
and have different ways of gauging how they measure up to
them. We established what evidence we wanted for these
values: fewer customer complaints and more joint projects
were two of many. Next we discussed the stakeholders in the