How - Dov Seidman [52]
I would guess that most people think that taking unearned credit is not right, even if you didn’t solicit it. It’s not something one should do, nor a value we agree with. And yet I would also hazard to guess that, if you think hard enough, you can think of a similar moment in which, either because of the absence of a specific rule or the presence of an ambiguous one, you let your actions be guided by your relation to a rule and not by what, in reflection, you should have done to be consistent with your values. Transcending the rules-trapped language of can and embracing the values-inspired language of should illuminates the pathways to truly innovative solutions like those of UMHS, as well as simpler choices like sharing the credit. UMHS achieved dramatically lower litigation costs; you, by sharing credit, earn the loyalty and increased dedication of a junior associate who, the next time your team needs an extra measure of effort to accomplish its goal, happily steps up and puts in the weekend hours necessary to get you there. To thrive in a world of HOW, you must balance your muscles of casual avoidance—as strong and developed as they are—with the ability to think in the language of values, in terms of should.
There is little in rules that inspires; by definition, you comply with them. All it takes to honor a rule is to do what it says, and nothing more. Rules breed a culture of acquiescence in which everyone comes to terms with them and finds a way to live within them or a way to circumvent them—in other words, to live in their positive or negative space. While giving someone the advice to “break all the rules” is terrible counsel, giving them the opposite age-old counsel to “just play by the rules” is now not that much better advice. It consigns them to a life of external servitude and a compliant mind-set. Thinking in the language of values frees you from the tyranny of rules and from the illusion of freedom you have when in their negative space.
To be capable of making Waves, you need an organizing principle more inspirational and compelling than rules. You can’t start a Wave by making a rule that Waves will happen every Tuesday after lunch. And if you could, what kind of a Wave would it be? Thinking and communicating in the language of should—values-based language—by its very nature inspires. The landscape of values is vast and unbounded, and creates a genuinely free space of creativity in which you can see new ways of accomplishing your goals. Values matter to us, and they matter to others, so they fill the synapses between us and others with greater meaning. Values provide floors plus propulsion because we think they are important, and because we tend to spend our energy on what matters most to us. Justice. Truth. Honesty. Integrity. Values have texture. Fairness. Humility. Service to others. The language of values inspires us because values are aspirational in nature. They propel us to higher ground. We don’t believe in rules but we all hold a belief in our values. They speak to the core of what makes us human. Values do double duty; they inspire us to do more than while simultaneously preventing us from doing less than. To betray them is to betray ourselves. They create natural floors without creating inadvertent ceilings.
We all have a core set of values, formed over time either by the influence of others—parents, teachers, mentors, friends—or learned through life experience. Unlike rules, which act as proxies for the things we care about—like a voting age approximates maturity and civic-mindedness—values are not a mechanism or device that approximates what is important or mediates between us and what is important; they connect us to it directly. Values