November was a difficult month for Penn State. The scandal surrounding former coach Jerry Sandusky just doesn’t seem to end. It brought a swift end to the storied career of Joe Paterno, the President of Penn State, and every day more troubling details emerge. As a leader, as a father, and as a graduate of Penn State, this story has impacted me on several levels. Today, though, I’m thinking about what we can learn from this tragedy, especially as it relates to organizational values.
From the information we have at this point, it seems that the core issue is that key leaders within Penn State decided to “seek first the organization” rather than leading with courage and standing up for their values. Although the specific circumstances at Penn State may illustrate an extreme, the issue of seeking first the organization plagues many organizations...and sadly, even churches.
Every day, as church leaders face a wide range of decisions, unseen values are at work. Whether it's dozens of little decisions laced throughout a day, or the big ones that come once or twice a year, something is guiding decisions.
Some of these decisions seem to hold the future of the church in the balance. What will happen to giving if we change this or that about our strategy? Will we even exist as a church 3 years from now if we decide to do this or that? Of course, questions are never posed with this kind of directness, but they are the underlying, driving factors of decision-making far too often.
Let’s face it. It’s easy to slip into maintenance mode—especially when difficult decisions may result in people losing their jobs. And I’m not just talking about senior pastors trying to protect their own jobs, but protecting the employment of their teams—people they love and care about. The problem is that seeking first the organization always leads to an abandonment of your values. And when we abandon our values, we are heading down a dangerous path. The situation at Penn State—one that has been repeated with different details at too many other organizations to mention—has proven this once again.
So how can we avoid slipping into a mode of seeking first the organization?
The first step is to realize that this is a danger that looms for every organization. We have to admit that we all struggle at some level with the tendency to protect the organization above our values. Next, I think there are a few warning signs that we should notice along the way.
Warning Signs of Seeking First the Organization
#1 - The actions and decisions of certain individuals cannot be questioned. As more and more details emerge at Penn State, it’s becoming clearer that there were people within the leadership who could not be questioned. Somehow, their perceived worth was so high within the culture that they were “untouchable.” This is an indicator that something other than the guiding values or principles have taken priority.
#2 - The implications of certain topics are off limits. What are leaders thinking that they don’t have the freedom to talk about? Are there times in leadership meetings that topics are glossed over or ignored because they are too difficult to talk about? This is another sign that the values have been discarded as guiding principles for decision-making.
#3 - Leaders feel hopeless and morale is poor throughout the organization. People aren’t motivated by the idea of just “keeping things going.” That’s simply not a mission worth giving your life for. When leaders feel hopeless to bring change to organizational culture, everyone senses it. The result? Your organization is mired in an endless routine that has lost the passion and fire behind it. Your values answer what I call question hero: why do we do what we do? If people sense that the real reason—the real why—behind what you do is simply to keep the organization going, they’ll lose heart and stop giving their best. And, as we’ve all seen, the end of that road is very ugly.
When it comes right down to it, seeking first the organization is a classic paradox. By elevating the perpetuation of the organization about its values we will ultimately do more damage to the organization than if we were to make the difficult leadership decisions required in the moment. How did the leadership decisions at Penn State work out? And in the process, lives were damaged in profound and destructive ways.
Values matter. They're one of the five aspects of the Vision Frame that both articulates your uniqueness and guides your decision-making. That’s why it’s so important both to be clear about your values and to be committed to living them out...even when it’s difficult.