Tools for Transformation:
Values Creation Process
What It Is
A process for creating and implementing a set of shared Values in an organization.
What It Can Do
This tool can assist you to:
- Identify and articulate shared Values for a team or organization
- Align members of a team or organization around owning the Values
- Help implement and integrate Values to help shape and inform collective awareness, behavior, and decision making
When To Use It
- To clarify, update, and/or realign around existing team or organizational Values.
- To articulate and create a set of Values for a new or evolving organization, team, coalition, etc.
How It Works
Examine the development and use of effective Values in three phases as follows:
Phase 1
Define a set of shared Values for your team or organization: REQUIRES 45 minutes to two (2) hours depending on whether values already exist.
Phase 2
Make Values meaningful and relevant in the context of working together (whether new or already in place): REQUIRES one (1) hour.
Phase 3
Implement new (or renewed) Values in a way that builds alignment and commitment: REQUIRES approximately three (3) hours.
NOTE: This work can be stretched out over the course of days or longer – with Phase 3 coming after the team or organization has spent some time working with Phase 2.
PHASE 1: Define a set of shared Values for your team or organization.
Set the context.
SAY:
︎Greatness – in organizations as in individuals – is a measure not only of what is accomplished, but how it is accomplished.
︎At the root of all human planning, choice, and behavior is a guiding set of priorities — of Values. Most often, these Values are unspoken, even unconscious. But when they are made explicit, they are given new force, energy, and legitimacy.
︎When chosen with deep awareness and authenticity, they provide a platform for powerful impact and influence in the world – a platform for greatness.
︎Core Values are demonstrated in every aspect of how we think, act, and relate as members of our organizations. They reflect:
︎Our most basic precepts about what’s important in our organizational, professional and personal lives – what is to be held sacred and inviolate
︎Those enduring principles that are the core of the organization’s greatness
︎The standards against which acceptable and non-acceptable behavior is determined
A) Examples of Values and Their Impact: 10 min.
ASK people to give examples of what they believe Values are and to describe their impact. Some examples:
• Guiding principles – help guide behavior
• Standards – establishes clear expectations
• Beliefs – helps create a shared context
ASK:
︎Why would any team, any organization – any group of people working together – choose to declare a set of Values? What might be the desired impact? Some examples:
• Attracts certain kinds of people
• Defines how we want to treat each other and the outside world
• Creates consistency regarding expectations for behaviors and attitudes
• During change can create consistency and stability
• It seems like the right thing to do
SAY:
︎ When you declare your Values, you are putting yourself out there: visible, vulnerable, accountable.
︎ It tells the world that just producing results is not acceptable; how you produce those results is also fair game to be looked at, talked about, and measured.
︎ When defining Values, it’s important to keep in mind that we must be committed to consistently following through on them.
︎ This means integrating the Values into more than our personal behaviors; they must be reflected in everyday measures, performance systems, how we choose who we hire or partner with, how we orient new team members, where we place our emphasis on recognition and development, etc.
︎ We are inspired to give our best when our own personal Values align closely with the Values of the teams and organizations we choose to be a part of.
︎ Fundamentally, defining and committing to shared Values is not just about doing the right thing; it is an investment in producing higher quality and more sustainable results. Values should not only reflect what feels good—they also should reflect what we believe is absolutely required for success of the organizational mission.
︎ Through change, Values remain the same.
Option 1: If the team/organization already has an established set of Core/Shared Values, transition and jump ahead to Phase 2.
Option 2: If the team/organization does NOT have an established set of Core/Shared Values, continue with Phase 1, as below.
B) Thinking About Values: 15 min.
SAY:
︎ We’re not making up something new here. Our values already do exist. This is a process of noticing, discerning, and affirming the implicit expectations we all share as a team.
︎ As we talked about earlier, simply by making them more explicit, we give them more power and influence. We become more conscious, more aware. We begin to hold ourselves and others more accountable. And we create a shared framework within which we all know how to build these Values into every experience, every process, and every outcome created by this team.
Handout: “Thinking About Values”
︎Put yourself “in the shoes” of the (team/organization/community) represented by each of us here in this room.
︎Spend some time answering the questions on this handout not from your own, individual perspective, but from your sense of the shared aspirations and intentions of this (team/ organization/community). As a whole. As an entity all its own.
The questions:
︎ What is most important?
︎ What is not okay to violate or compromise?
︎ What are our core principles?
︎ Imagine times of crisis, critical decisions, emotional challenges. . . What stood out as most important?
︎ If you had to capture these principles in five (5) distinct “headline” categories, what five words would you use?
Allow 10 minutes; periodically prompt/remind people to think in terms of the group as a whole.
C) From Many, One – Facilitated Group Report Out: 60 min.
Step 1 : Facilitate a discussion of people’s lists, comments, insights.
Encourage people not to get caught-up with wordsmithing, but to think in terms of thematic similarities or distinctions.
During the process, begin to chart different “themes” on separate flip charts – generally, you will have no more than 8-10 distinct themes (e.g., “Honesty,” “Integrity,” “Straight-forwardness,” “Candor,” and “Truthfulness” could all appear on the same page).
If in doubt, keep the values separate – you will have the opportunity to let the group consolidate the lists next.
Step 2 : Facilitate consolidation.
You want the group to self-select the 4-to-6 shared Values that are most inclusive and representative of the shared Values identified. There are several options you can use, among them:
︎Sticky Notes: Have individuals write the five (and only five) core Values from their worksheet on five separate sticky notes, and then place the notes on whichever “theme” flip chart page best represents that value for them. Work interactively with the large group to consolidate themes down to 5-6 charts, and discuss whatever may have to “fall off” the final list during the process.
︎Small Groups: Break the room into groups of 4-5 and have them process the content generated by the large-group dialogue (and captured on the flip charts) down to their own list of five “headline” Values (without getting caught-up in wordsmithing). Bring the groups all back together to present, and interactively facilitate a final consolidation of the lists.
︎Triads (There are three roles: A, B, C):
• A: Speaks to the THREE (3) shared Values that now seem most significant to them, and why.
• B: Actively listens
• C: Observes and takes notes on content and process
2min. conversation, followed by 1-min. feedback on process. Only then switch roles.
Once the triads complete their conversations, have them come to agreement on the “Top 5” shared Values.
(Depending on size of group) Combine triads (2-4 triads per small group), and have the triads present to each other their findings; the small groups must come to agreement on their own list of Top 5.
Have small groups present to the room; facilitate a final reconciliation and consolidation of the Top 5.
Regardless of process used, remind people not to get hung up on specific words – meaning and intention (which they will work on next) are more significant than the labels themselves.
Challenge the group to actually make choices. In the attempt to come to agreement, there is often a tendency to avoid decisions by clumping Values together – sometimes to the point where clarity and meaning are lost.
If desired, at the end of the session, the group can assign a small team to take the final “wordsmithing” of session outputs offline to polish the presentation and present back to the group for final approval.
Continue to Phase 2 ︎︎︎