"Values" are Bullshit

BayStar seeks to retrieve investment in SCO It sickens me to think that there are companies who are betting money on SCO, by investing in them. This isn't exactly a moral crusade by SCO, it's about money and shareprice. I really hope that BayStar and The Royal Bank of Canada get exactly what they and SCO deserve. I guess this is how most big business works. It's about money, and not morals and values, unless you see MoneyMaking as the prime value!

Which brings me on to what I was going to write about separately, but I'll do it here. Go have a look at Royal Bank of Canada's "Values"
"Trust through integrity in everything we do" Now how does that fit in with underwriting SCO. Perhaps RBC are helping SCO in their "moral" crusade to rid the world of evil software copiers.

Any dickhead with a random word generator can come up with a set of values on a website. But what the hell does it mean? Nothing. They are just words. Ahh of course, it's time to "live" the values. More bullshit. Unless people actually change their behaviour day to day, hour by hour, minute by minute, it means nothing.

I am sick of corporates (and anyone else for the at matter) coming out with a set of Values. This values thing will be gone in 10 years time, just another passing fad. It took me a bit of time with this, to see that Emperor has no clothes, but that's exactly what it is. Almost every large corporate, good or evil, has a set of Values on its website, which just goes to show how useless values are.

Let's get real here. Individual people have values. That's about all you can say on values. Even the individual with values doesn't for most of the time use those values much. We are creatures of habit and expediency, so when I get up in the morning, I don't think to myself, "Ah yes, we'll have a bit of Integrity today, Tony." No, I go to the toilet, I scratch myself, I have a shower, and then breakfast.

We're being led on this guilt trip by a lot of consultants telling us about values. And the best test of people who espouse these values, is to find out how much they live their values and adhere to what they preach. Interesting isn't it that it seems most people who espouse "Values", don't usually practise what they preach.

And what are Values anyway? They're treated like some kind of absolute good, where in fact life and business is expediency and compromise. And let me let you in on a little secret about values, if you're thinking about looking at your own Values statement for your website or company, after you've written them, and they include such things as Integrity, LifeStyle Balance, Family, Putting the Customer First, Teamwork, etc etc, go back at look at how you or your company actually spends each 24 hours. You'll be amazed to find that even with your personal values (which are in fact Ideals) how out of synch you are with them. Oh sure, Integrity, Health, Family, Creativity are all such good things, but most of the time is spent Whining, Bitching, Travelling, and Reading your Emails!!