Acronyms, alliteration and absurdity: the sad truth about Organisational 'Values'

I had an epiphany some years back. In a brief conversation with a young woman, in the queue for lunch at a corporate ‘values’ day (I was a Director), opened my eyes up to the whole values thing in organisations. 

“I have my values,” she said, “and they’re not going to be changed by a HR department.... I’ll be leaving in a couple of years and no doubt their HR will have a different set of values… which I’ll also ignore”. Wisest thing I heard all day.

You’ve probably had the ‘values’ treatment. Suddenly, parachuted out of HR, comes a few abstract nouns, or worse, an acronym, stating that the organisation now has some really important ‘values’. Even worse, an expensive external agency may have juiced them up. I genuinely like organisations that have a strategy, purpose, even a mission. But the obsession with organisational values I just don't buy.

Not long afterwards my fears were confirmed. I chaired a Skills Summit, where innumerable HR folk pompously paraded their company values in a series of talks. An endless stream of abstract nouns, all of which seemed like things any normal human being would want in any context, in or out of work - you know the words - integrity, innovation, honesty, customer-focus, community....  After a full day of this stuff I was impressed by the guy who ran a small, very successful software company, who stood at the podium, and claimed that his company didn't really have any stated values and felt that the whole 'values' thing could be replaced by one phrase 'Don't be a dick!". That became a meme some years back and touched a nerve because it cut through the hubris.

Why HR-driven values are out of touch with reality?

Having dealt with hundreds of large organisations for more almost 40 years, I have yet to find one whose values were anything more than platitudes. They are invariably a crude mixture of reactive PR, HR overreach even a marketing ploy. Usually a crude selection from a list of abstract nouns, often forced into an idiotic acronym, they bear no relation to reality. Even when masked by complex consultancy reports and training - it's almost always bullshit Bingo.

Why would we imagine that HR have any skills in this area? In what sense are they 'experts' in values? For me, it is a utopian view of work and organisations. I can remember the day when organisational 'value' lists never existed. People were more honest and realistic about expectations. They came in when HR suddenly decided that they had to look after our emotional and moral welfare - always a ridiculous idea.

Values-washing

The banks were full of this 'values' culture – that was before the financial crash. I worked with many of them. It was all puff and PR. People do not, and don't, buy into this stuff. They can barely recall what the values are. I have values and I'm not interested in what HR, or some external consultant, says my values should be. The even more ridiculous idea that people who don't adopt those values should be forced out is wrong and illegal.

They shove them on the website but few remember them and even fewer care.... The really interesting thing about 'values' is that those companies who feel most compelled to get them identified - banks, accountancies, consultancies, tech companies, pharma companies etc - are the very companies where they were most ignored. They are blatant attempts at value-washing, appearing to be value driven when you are not.

Try these authenticity tests to your company values. Sniff out the hubris and bullshit.

Test 1: Bad acronyms - values created to fit word

If your values set is an acronym, they’re almost certainly inauthentic. The net result of fuzzy HR thinking is so often the ‘bad acronym’. Chances are that someone has shoehorned some abstract nouns into a word that sounds vaguely positive, completely losing sight of the original intention. Are they telling you that their values ‘just happened’ to fall into that acronym? Actually, what happens is that at least some of the values emerge from the acronym. That's bullshit.

How about this from a Cheshire voluntary group: FLUID - Freedom 2 Love Ur Identity. Or another real example of a crap acronym: VALUE - this HR person actually went online as she could only think of Value Added….. and wanted others to fill the acronym out! They did, and she was delighted with, Value Added Local, User friendly Experience. What a load of puff. 

When values are created to fit a word you are engaging in an infantile exercise that treats employees like children. Even worse is the use of middle letters, rendering the acronym, as an aide memoire, completely useless. Here’s a real example. It’s a cracker. PEOPLE: Positive Spirit and Fun, HonEsty and Integrity, Opportunities Based on Merit, Putting the Team first, Lasting value for Clients and People, Excellence through Professionalism. One overlong, impossible to remember acronym with eleven nouns, and I love the way they have to use the ‘E’ in the middle of HonEsty to make it work. This, by the way, is from an HR consultancy.

It’s not that I hate acronyms. They’re great as memorable cues. For example, I rather like ABC (Airways, Breathing, Circulation) in first aid. I also have a soft spot for funny acronyms, such as ALITALIA (Airplane Lands In Turin And Luggage In Ancona), BAAPS (British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeon) unbelievably a real organisation, and DIMWIT (Don't Interrupt Me While I'm Talking).… it’s just that I’m a fully paid up member of the AAAA, the Association Against Acronym Abuse. And let's just quietly forget Microsoft's 'Critical Update Notification Tool'.

Test 2: Alliteration test

You hear alliterative value lists all the time  - 'Imagination, Integrity, Innovation' (two organisations I know have this one set, clearly having cribbed it from the internet, or lists of 'C' words such as creativity, curiosity and collaborative. These are far too conveniently alliterative for my liking. The world is not intrinsically alliterative and if your list of values all start with the same letter - it's forced nonsense. 

Test 3: Negative test

Lists of values are often so obvious that they are hardly worth mentioning. Sure, you can say we all need to be 'Customer friendly' and so on. But who would say that being Customer unfriendly was ever on the cards? The ‘negation’ test is a useful filter. Ask whether any normal human being would deny having the stated opposite or negative value. If the answer is invariably NO, as it’s not a value but a basic, common sense belief. Human nature is a complex thing and people are too different to be corralled into value sets. Beware of BIG words like integrity, imagination, creativity, innovation…… if your values are abstract platitudes – no one will care.

Test 4: Are they really values?

A value is something that determines a moral decision. Yet many organizational ‘values’ are not values at all. ‘Imagination’, for example, is not a moral value, neither I would argue is 'creativity'. I’m not sure that ‘Leadership’ is an intrinsic value, in the sense that Pol Pot was a leader. So, for this test, look at each value in turn and ask whether it really is a value or activity, competence or some other thing? 

Test 5: Diversity problem

There’s something odd about having diversity as a value within a non-diverse, fixed value set. Empirically, people have different sets of values. We know this from large-scale studies, such as the World Values' Survey, going since 1989, in over 100 countries. An organisation is likely to have a mix of nationalities and cultures; religious, secular, liberal, conservative, individualistic, communal. Imposing a single set of values from above may not fit with this diversity of cultures and values. If diversity of values matters, the imposition of a set of fixed values makes little sense. 

To practice diversity is to live with a diversity of values. At the Skill Summit, some companies seemed to imply that if you didn't fit in with their imposed values, they'd try to get you out. Really? When values become reasons to sack people, you've got to worry. Even the phrase 'Don't be a dick' worries me. Companies often have dicks in the workplace. So what? Lots of very competent and talented people are 'dicks'. Elon Musk is a dick. Steve Jobs was a dick. Gates was a dick. Get over it. We're all different.

Test 6: Sniff test

It is usually quite easy to expose the hypocrisy of corporate values, namely the

hypocrisy of an organisation that exhorts ‘values’ by looking at its a) tax affairs b) senior staff salaries, c) senior staff bonuses d) customer list e) behaviours. If the company plays the tax avoidance game using offshore tax arrangements, or transfer pricing – that’s almost every large tech company, Google, Apple, Amazon, Starbucks etc. etc. then add hypocrisy to their values. If the CEO earns a ridiculous amount of money but doesn’t pay a living wage to the people at the bottom, the value of their values is nil. To be more precise, if your company pays the CEO way more than x10 the salary of the lowest member of staff – question the values. If, as a bank or other organisation, you’ve mis-sold, ripped people off and generally fiddled the markets, ripped off suppliers, don’t pay on time - don’t even mention values. 

Read Nagel's Equality and Partiality. It doesn't take long to work out that stated public values are often different from personal values. The same with organisations. You get the idea. Subject your organisation to a sniff test. Take the values and really ask – of the people who have told you that they matter – whether they’re applied at the top of the organisation and in its financial dealings. 

Conclusion

In truth, everyone knows that values are actually marketing exercises, used by organisations as slogans. They have little to do with actual behaviour in organisations. They infantilise people, reduce them to ciphers. Ask the person in the street if large organisations have served society well in terms of values? Banks? Supermarket chains? Tax dodging tech companies? Tax dodging retailers? Football organisations like FIFA? Sports organisations? Political parties? Energy companies? No. 

We have a crisis of trust in institutions because people parrot values which they don’t then practice. The ‘values’ obsession is just another example of overreach by HR. It keeps them occupied and gives everyone the sense that moral purpose has been served. It may even mask the reality of controlling behaviour. When I hear people discuss values, or see ‘values’ training, I hear moralising. Lots of back-slapping and ‘aren’t we great’ type platitudes. We’re all different. It is the workplace not a moral crusade. 

Forget the buzzwords, the brutal truth about company values is that a select group at the top come up with 'values' and we all have to march in step to those values, even though, as most of us know, the further up an organisation you go, the more rarified values become.

Groucho Marx said "I have values and if you don't like them.... I have other values" and if asked whether I change my values if they are not the same as my employer, I have argued with many people for many years that employers and HR have no right to do this. The answer is NO. It's an excuse for one group to impose their personal views on another and is causing untold damage in organisations.

People have values, organisations don’t. 

20 ways to use NEW Google Video analysis

Google’s Gemini-Exp-1114 has launched and is getting rave reviews. It beats OpenAIs GPT-4o model hands down.

VIDEO

The BIG new feature is the analysis of video. You can upload video for analysis from your Google drive and off it goes.

Examples include analysis of:

STUDENT PERFORMANCE

Presentation performance

Eye tracking in teaching surgery etc

Coaching on sports performance

Feedback on musical performance

Teacher/lecturer/trainer performance

Compare present with past performance

STUDENT LEARNING

Lecture summarisation

Image, graph, diagram analysis into notes

Generate practical tutorials from tasks/procedures

Vocational tutorials

Pick out key clips

Create branched scenarios from video

TASK ANALYSIS

Behavioural tasks analysis from real world actions

Workflow efficiency - redundant steps in task execution

Performance analysis of meetings

Highlighting health & safety in real world environments

ASSESSMENTS

Assessments created from a lecture

Create video-based assessments

Assessment of student presentation of assignments

Identify specific errors made when doing something

You get the idea.

BREAKTHROUGH

It may lift us out of the current world of teaching and learning, incredibly limited by its focus on ‘text’. We are drowning in a sea of text, yet we know it does little in teaching an assessing actual skills and performance.

MODEL PERFORMANCE

Gemini-Exp-1114 has knocked OpenAI off the top of the Chatbot Arena leaderboard, the de facto goto place for benchmarking. It scored particularly well in Maths, Creative Writing, Longer Query, Instruction Following, Multi-turn and Hard Prompts. This will also help with the video analysis.

LONGER QUERY and Instruction following is a query, prompt or instruction that includes a detailed and extended description of what the user wants the AI to do or generate, allowing you to get the model to follows specific steps, formats, or guidelines in its response.

MULTI-TURN is dialogue with the AI that spans multiple exchanges (turns), where each response builds on the previous ones, remembering prior questions and answers to provide more coherent responses.

HARD PROMPTS are prompts that are intentionally complex, ambiguous, or challenging for the AI to interpret or execute correctly. It is here you expose the model's limitations, so useful in evaluating its boundaries.

CONCLUSION

The competitive race is producing faster better models but more importantly, a new layer of multimodal functionality is making AI far more usable. All of the above show that the new models are improving practical usefulness. AI is moving away from just a model release to something that gives better practical results, especially in education and learning.

Is AI generated video as GOOD as real video in learning?

There are many surprising things we can learn from research into video and learning. I have given many talks on the subject showing research on video and memory (the transience effect), does learning at x1.5 or x2 affect learning? Do segmentation, length, perspective, picture quality, audio and so on affect learning? Here are 15 THINGS that may shock you from the research… some will surprise you!

But is AI generated video as good as real video in learning?

Leiker et al (2023) in Generative AI for learning looked at this hypothesis.

The study took 83 adult learnersn randomly assigning them into 2 groups:
1.    Traditionally produced instructor video
2.    Video with realistic AI generated character
Pre and post learning assessment and survey data were used to determine what was learnt and how learners perceived the two types of video.

NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES
No significant differences were found in either learning or how the videos were perceived. They suggest that AI-generated synthetic, talking head learning videos (limited) are a viable substitute for videos.

This doesn't surprise me. I’ve been creating avatars of myself at increasing levels of fidelity in appearance, movement, lip-synch & voice, speaking many languages from Chinese to Zulu. This involved going into a studio for video capture and separate audio studio for voice capture. A range of services are available from Synthesia to Heygen. These avatars can be used as employees in management training, patients in healthcare training and customers in retail training.

SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES
Any form of human interaction can use this technique for training; in instructional videos, trigger videos, branched scenario videos and videos with additional AI generated learning experiences and assessment. In fact, the use of AI can lead to significant UPLIFTS in learning outcomes. In one trial with a client, before GenAI appeared, in 2020, AI enhanced learning resulted in a 61% increase in assessed learning.

INTERACTIVE CHARACTERS
We now have avatars that one can converse with using AI chatbot technology taking it to another level through scenarios and simulations, using real dialogue. We can expect tons of these to appear in computer games (OpenAI have dealings with GTA). But it is in training that they have huge potential. It has been impossible to create high fidelity simulations for soft skills in the past. I created a lot using fixed video clips in interviewing skills, conflict, language training and so on. They took a lot of time to design write and produce. These are about to get a lot quicker and cheaper.

CONCLUSION
The use of AI generated video is already here and will continue to evolve. We are not yet at the level of full drama but the direction of travel is clear.

GenAI synthesises and does not copy – huge case won by OpenAI

This big news.

In what is seen as a critical test case, SDNY Judge Colleen McMahon has dismissed the idea that training a LLM is copying. The ruling, (without prejudice) did not provide judgements on what I'm about to say, merely stated the arguments and provides the explanatory detail, which I think is sound.

Generative AI ‘synthesises’, it does not copy. This is central. It’s a bit like our brains, we see, hear and read stuff but memory isn’t copying, it’s a process of synthesis and recall is reconstructive. If you believe in the computational theory of mind, as I do, this makes sense (many don't).

What is even more interesting is the conclusion that the datasets are so large than no one piece is likely to be plagiarised. That, I think is the correct conclusion. It would take 170,000 years for us to read the GPT4 dataset, reading 8 hours a day. Any one piece is quantifiably minuscule.

On the idea that regurgitated data has appeared. It would appear that this problem has been solved (almost), with provenance identified by some systems, such as GPT o1. In other words, don't worry, it was an early artefact of largely early systems.

I was always sure that these cases would result in this type of ruling, as the basic law of copyright depends on copying, and that is not what is happening here. All freshly minted content is based on past content to a degree and here it is not just a matter of degree (it’s minuscule) but also the methods used. Complex case but right rationale.

I think we're seeing many of the ethical objections to AI fade somewhat. There are still issues but we're moving past the rhetorical phase of straw men and outrage, into detailed analysis and examination. This is an important Rubicon to have crossed. Many so called 'ethical' issues are just issues that need to be worked through, rather than waved as flags of opposition. We are seeing the resolution of these issues. Time to move on.

AI school opens - learners are not good or bad but fast and slow

What was surprising about this initiative was the strong reaction of outrage and dismissal. It is only 20 people at GCSE level, in a fascinating experiment but you’d think it was Armageddon. We have seen a rise in home schooling and school absences post-Covid. Not all are happy with the current schooling for their children, especially those with special educational needs. Why wouldn’t we want some experimentation in this area and AI is an obvious area to look.

Learners are not good or bad but fast and slow

The pedagogy is sound for some, perhaps not all. Rather than a one-size-fits-all direct instruction, each learner goes at their own pace. Sitting in rows in a classroom, rows in a lecture - that's the model this challenges. The myth is that the traditional model did what many claim it does.

Bloom researched this 50 years ago. Not his famous 2 Sigma paper, which over-egged the effect, but the idea of time to competence. He is best known for his ‘taxonomy’, but he never did draw a pyramid and his taxonomy was radically altered by subsequent researchers, as it was too primitive, rigid and far from representative of how people learn. His more important work in self-paced learning, led him to believe, in ‘Human Characteristics and School Learning’ that learners could master knowledge and skills given enough time. It is not that learners are good or bad but fast and slow. This recognises that the pace of learning varies among individuals rather than being a measure of inherent ability

The artificial constraint of time in timed periods of learning, timetables and fixed-point final exams, is a destructive filter on most. The solution was to loosen up on time to democratise learning to suit the many not the few. Learning is a process not a timed event. Learning, free from the tyranny of time. allows learners to proceed at their own pace.

Bloom proposed three things could make mastery learning fulfil its potential:

1. Entry diagnosis and adaption (50%) - diagnose, predict and recommend

2. Address maturation (25%) - personalise and adapt

3. Instructional methods (25%) - match to different types of learning experiences and time

That is what they are doing here. Lesson plans focus on learners rather than the traditional teacher-centric model. Assessing prior strengths and weaknesses, personalising to focus more on weaknesses and less on things known or mastered. It’s adaptive, personalised learning. The idea that everyone should learn at the exactly same pace, within the same timescale is slightly ridiculous, ruled by the need for timetabling a one to many, classroom model.

Learning coaches

There are three learning coaches, that’s one per 7 pupils, quite a good staff/pupil ratio compared to almost all schools. They are trained to oversee and encourage, rather than teach directly. That’s fine, as the direct instruction is done online.

By outsourcing subject matter expertise to the technology – AI has a degree in every subject, speaks many languages, can be adjusted to any level. It is this access to any subject that is so compelling. I have written about the realisation of a Universal teacher before. It is getting ever nearer.

It is also available 24/7, anyplace, the advantages over a strictly timetabled school are obvious. Holidays can also be taken at any time. These are simply practical advantages.

On top of this are the opportunities to make learning e accessible through adjusting the level of the language and opportunities for T2S and S2T, along with help on dyslexia and other disabilities, at a level way above normal school environments. 

Criticisms

One criticism is that this will not developing emotional intelligence, as if single-age groups, sitting 30 or more in a small room encourages this more than smaller groups. They have learning coaches and are still speaking and interacting with each other. Do we say that working remotely from home has the same effect? Yet that has been normalised. At least these students are together in one place.

There is this idea that the only way to develop critical thinking is sitting in a row in a classroom or lecture theatre. Critical thinking is not some isolated skill taught on its own, it needs domain knowledge and this is what this approach encourages. AI can already critique a claim, debate with you and critique your own work. It will also unpack its own reasoning.

There is also plenty of opportunity for creating safe spaces for discussion and debate. Debate and discussion can be fostered formally and informally in this environment. There is even the possibility of debating online adversaries. The learning coaches deal with behaviour, public speaking and debate.

Costs

At an eye watering £27.000 a year, it’s a rich person’s game. With 20 start-up pupils, that’s over half a million revenue straight off the bat. But the cost to the state per pupil is £8500 in Scotland and £7200 elsewhere in the UK. One can see economies of scale emerge quickly if it works. But before spitting out the withering criticism, let’s see if it works.

Conclusion

For the first time in the history of our species we have technology that performs some of the tasks of teaching. We have reached a pivot point where this can be tried and tested. My feeling is that we’ll see a lot more of this, as parents and general teachers can delegate a lot of the exposition and teaching of the subject to the technology. We may just see a breakthrough that transforms education.

5 big surprises in Wharton report on GenAI

Enjoyed this report as it was so goddamn honest, contradicting everything the 'consultants' and 'ethics' folk were recommending for the last year and more!

1. Gen AI Strategy is led internally—NOT by consultants

This bucks the trend. The strategy work is not led by the usual suspects or suspect advisors, many of whom have no real experience of building anything in AI. The bandwagon got bogged down by the sheer weight of hucksters. This technology gives so much agency to individuals within organisations, from to anyone producing text of any kind to coders, that the sisters and brothers are doing it for themselves. You wonder whether consultancy itself is under real threat from AI?

2. NO stringent policies on use in organisations
Interesting. Seems like a contradiction – massive rise in use but little sign of policies being used. I suspect that people have seen through the platitudes that are so often seen in these documents and statements of the blinding obvious, over-egging and exaggerating the ethical dangers.

3. Most employees do NOT face heavy restrictions in accessing Gen AI at their companies
The scepticism, regulatory effort, fear-mongering, even doomsters last year seem to have given way to a more level-headed recognition that this is a technology with real promise, so let's allow folk to use it, as we know they already do! My guess is that this AI on the SLY stuff happened so quickly that organisations just couldn't and didn't know how to respond. Like a lot of tech - it just happens.

4. Companies are adapting by expanding teams and adding Chief AI Officer (CAIO) roles
I wasn’t sure about this, as the first I heard about was in this report! I suspect this is a US thing or exaggerated in the sense of just having someone in the organisation who has emerged as the knowledgeable project manager. Can see it happening though.

5. LESS negativity and scepticism
More decision-makers feel ‘pleased’, ‘excited’, and ‘optimistic’, and less ‘amazed’, ‘curious’ and ‘sceptical’. Negative perceptions are softening, as decision-makers see more promise in Gen AI's ability to enhance jobs without replacing employees. This makes sense. A neat study showed that the scepticism tended to come from those who hadn’t used GenAI in anger. Now that adoption has surged, nearly doubling across functional areas in one year, the practical experimentation has shifted sentiment.

We seem to be going through the usual motions of a technological shift, where we get a period of fierce fear and resistance that gives way to the acceptance that it is all right really. The nay-sayers needed get it out of their systems, before use surges and realism prevails.

https://ai.wharton.upenn.edu/focus-areas/human-technology-interaction/2024-ai-adoption-report/

Should L&D be renamed the ‘PERFORMANCE Department’?

4 hours agoL&D is a wagon without a horse, with no pulling power or sense of direction. Could a change of focus provide the direction, momentum and horsepower that has been lacking?

Could we rename Learning & Development, as just ‘Performance’, like Marketing, Legal and Finance Departments?  Learning puts too much focus on courses. ‘Development’ is too vague. We must link what we do with measurable outcomes linked to proven performance, productivity and progress.

‘Performance’ puts the individual into the flow of the organisation. we need to foster a work environment where employees feel valued, motivated, and invested in – through their performance, not through a diet of ‘courses’.

A wider perspective seeing learning as performance would link what we do and what needs to be done. The organisation would see results and more sophisticated learning and work solutions related to strategy would emerge.

Linking learning with performance go hand in glove, allowing us to rise above just course delivery into more considered informal and incremental learning, also more performance support, linking inputs with outputs.

Focusing on performance can be challenging and needs a clear causal link between learning initiatives and productivity gains but it can be done.

Of course, we don’t just want ‘faster horses’ as Henry Ford said, we need new different forms of locomotion. The technology of the age is digital and AI. Employees can be more autonomous, self-driven through bottom-up agency.

AI has shown there is an immense thirst among employees for going ahead and doing things faster and better. We use this technology to both learn and get things done, seeing no difference between the two. Learning and doing things faster and better become fused.

In writing something with evidence and import, many use AI to do fast research, write concisely, even critique the proposition. They see AI as a means to an end, the end being solid output.

AI gives us agency to improve ourselves with guidance from the organisation. It fuses learning and productivity, easy to use, fast and motivating. It should be in our domain, our responsibility.

It would also force us to be more data savvy. Forget happy sheets and bums on seats (measures wrong end of learner), let’s get serious with actual evaluative data. AI gives us a data scientist in our pockets – let’s use it.

Of course, AI as just one catalyst for action, there are many others, such as performance support, the wider world of career development, developing strategic skills for future needs and challenges.

The name matters less than the direction of travel. Strategic alignment with organisational goals should be our new goal. It puts an end to those endless discussions about the future of L&D by asking ‘to what problem are we a solution’? We all know it needs to be more performance focused, more relevant, more integrated with the organisation.