6. Creating & enacting your Values

A strong set of Values provides a useful alignment tool to define the beliefs at the core of an Organisations strategy.

They are a set of principles, statements or even single words that support the Purpose of the Organisation and provide definition on how all members should think when engaged in activity under the strategy. Composed and enacted well, these can be the differentiator between success and failure.

Why they're important

The creation of an organisation that thrives and achieves the very most from the resources it employs relies on teamwork. Strong, well enacted, values can create a culture of unity and continual progression that this can be built upon.

They are a proactive tool - enacted to promote clarity of decision making on both why work is undertaken and how it should be accomplished.

Curated and upheld well, a clear set of values should differentiate your organisations culture from any other, allowing all to work from the same platform and maximising the potential for daily achievement. This not only motivates the existing team members but can help with recruitment, ensuring prospective members to the team fit well.

How to curate your Value Statements

The values of an Organisation should be developed by its leaders, pulling inspiration from both the Purpose statement and an unfiltered collection of views from team members and stakeholders. Seeking possibilities from other organisations is lazy at best. Yours must be authentic and unique.

An initial collaborative discussion will suffice for their first draft creation. Starting individually then bringing thoughts together to curate the final set of core values.

You may find that there are a high number of proposals initially – discuss what was meant behind each statement – why it was written? What would that mean in practise? This discussion is critical to not only creating a common understanding around the team but will lead to synergy between other statements – providing a way to reduce multiple ideas to simple statements that are truly meaningful within your context.

At the end of your session, you should have no more than 10 value statements. Each should be clear, easy to understand without ambiguity and accurately describe the desired culture.

Before release, it is important to seek feedback from as many team members and stakeholders as possible. Poll their thoughts and gather feedback. Is it clear why these Values matter and how they might be used to create an environment for both organisational and personal growth in a practical way?

With the feedback obtained, the leadership team can reconvene for discussion on their findings and finalise the Value Statements – between 4-8 is perfect.

How to enact your Values

From day one, the communication, demonstration and monitoring of the core values is the only way they will cascade throughout the organisation and stick. This starts from the top.

Just displaying organisational values in the workplace is worthless unless they are felt at every turn and form part of the cultural DNA.

Look to adjust your daily work in support of these Values and support team members to adjust theirs where necessary. Use the value statements to guide how you create demand for your organisation and how you develop and deliver products/services. Frequently use them in discussion, allow them to help you make decisions, integrate them into meetings and make them the structure for communications. They are your hiring tool and should be embedded in how your organisation operates for continual growth of both performance and the people involved.

Successful organisations will evolve and grow because of their values being upheld so it’s important to regularly review these statements to ensure their continued relevance. If you need to pivot, change the values to promote this using the process above to do so.

Developing your company values requires time, effort, and thoughtful consideration from as many stakeholders as possible. Reward this effort by adjusting the way you work and watch how this results in continually increasing value for both the organisation and the people within it.