A few years ago, a colleague and I were in a conference room discussing Jack Welch’s Values vs. Production model. I drew the following diagram on the white board and explained how the model worked:

We talked about how to apply this model in our company. We discussed the performance of each of our top managers (“did they make their numbers?”), and how each lived the values. And of course, we started filling in the grid. It looked something like this, with each “X” representing a manager:

What was notable about this? In a very short period of time, we were able to view our leadership in a new way, and it raised some interesting questions for us:

1. We had our own views of how everyone performed, and used our own standards of what that performance should look like. As in the Welch model, you either measured up or you didn’t. This was the easy part.
2. We used our own standards for what the values should be. We didn’t actually discuss the values we needed, and our company had no defined values. Rather, we each used our own judgement about whether each individual displayed the values we thought our company needed. Again, you either did or you didn’t.
3. We looked at the top 20 people in our company and, surprise, surprise, we came up with five people in each quadrant. An even distribution!
4. Most importantly, this generated a discussion of values and who were we to set the values. I relied on Jack at this point. We were not really able to set the values. The values really come from the CEO, model his or her personality, style, beliefs, behaviors—well—values. And neither of us was the CEO.

Guess who walked in and wanted to see what were up to?