5
FROM THE FOUNDER
Values statements
It’s time to take a serious look at this stuff in your strategic plan and instead of fluff, focus on coming up with some substantive actions.
I recently discovered quite by accident a website called wankernomics.com. It was developed by a couple comedians who put on shows in Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K., who clearly have had much experience in the corporate world and who make a living poking fun at the business-speak and other management insanity that is so common in business today. One of their recent videos on how companies actually come up with organizational values really struck a chord with me.
Mark Zweig
As a part of the strategic planning process that AEC firms go through, after days or weeks of wordsmithing their mission and vision, many then feel obligated to articulate their “company values.” As a management consultant who has lead countless strategic planning projects, I have seen many of these values statements or lists of company values over the years, although thankfully, I can’t recall a single time I had to participate in developing these “values” for a client myself. I can admit it. I have always been very critical of the values statements companies in our industry develop and post on the wall in their lunchrooms and conference rooms, or use in their email signature lines. Most of them sound like pure BS to me. And I’m
not even an engineer or accountant. Some of these things must really sound like a five-alarm fire to them. In the wankernomics.com video, they joked that companies should, after hiring a facilitator, write down these five words to use as their values:
1. Integrity 2. Respect 3. Innovation 4. Collaboration 5. Excellence
See MARK ZWEIG , page 6
THE ZWEIG LETTER APRIL 28, 2025, ISSUE 1583
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker