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Note: Each month, The Rosy Blog highlights a different theme in our weekly posts. In April, our theme is the power of an organization’s mission, vision, and values. We’ll provide a series of exercises to help you get started on drafting your own—and of course if you need some help, you can always give us a ring.
It’s the final part of our Mission, Vision, Values Workshop! It’s time to draft your Values. These could be the most powerful and inspiring of the three parts of this Workshop, for their culture-building properties alone. It’s clear that focusing on the positive parts of your organization is much more effective than trying to correct negative culture. And a 2016 report by LinkedIn identified that purpose-driven employees report higher satisfaction, are more likely to be leaders, and more likely to help build the careers of those around them. Don’t you want to help your employees connect to all of that good stuff?
Of course you do! Let’s go!
Note: If you haven’t already completed our Mission and Vision Workshops, check them out! It’s not necessary to have completed them to do this exercise. Honestly, we just think they’re great.
Who should attend?
If you’re a small company, you may want to include every member of the organization in this process. But in many cases, you will want to choose a representative group of your company to lead the Mission/Vision/Values drafting process. If you have over 8 people in the room, you will want to split them into smaller working groups during the “Group it up” phase described below to encourage everyone’s participation.
What should you bring?
- Post-its
- Pencils, pens, or markers
- A blank wall, whiteboard, or table
- Your team
How long is this going to take?
We recommend setting aside 45-60 minutes for this exercise.
The Workshop
Begin by defining what Values are.
Your values are a series of principles that articulate what you stand for. They are the moral compass for your organization. They answer the question “Why do we do what we do?”
Fill in the blank.
Divide the whiteboard into three sections, and ask all of your team members to put three Post-Its down on the table in front of them. Ask the team to finish the sentence: “People would describe our products/services as…” three different ways, with a word on each of the Post-Its in front of them. When everyone has finished writing, have them all put those Post-Its on the board in the left-hand column. Repeat this exercise, with each team member filling out three Post-Its after each question twice more, and placing them in the second and third columns on the whiteboard.
- “When we are all alone and no one else is watching us, we are…”
- “In two years, I hope we are even more…”
Group it up.
Invite everyone to come up to the board (if you are a group of up to 8; larger groups should split into three teams, each taking a section of the board), and look for themes in the words everyone has chosen to create groups of Post-Its. “Quality,” “Excellence” and “Rigorous,” might all belong together, for example—or “Rigorous” might find a better home with “Thoughtful” and “Research-driven.” Encourage the group to discuss the choices they’re making as they’re making them.
Level it up.
Ask the group (or teams) to label each group of Post-Its, and encourage them to think carefully about the words they choose.
Rank them.
And here’s the part that’s always interesting: ask the group (or teams) to rank the groups they have labeled from most to least important. Again, encourage discussion—that debate will tell you things that you might not otherwise hear.
And there you have them: a first draft of your Values! This process probably won’t provide you with final values—in fact, it’s almost certain to overlook something that’s vital to your organization—but it gives you all something to react to. And getting to that point, as a team? So valuable.
A WORD OF CAUTION as you move towards finalizing your Values: If you can’t live up to it, don’t write it down. As Spiderman said, with great power comes great responsibility. Making claims you can’t live up to can have the reverse of all of the positive effects I outlined at the beginning of this post. But we believe in you and your judgment. Go get it!
Photo by Chang Duong on Unsplash
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