Identifying your organization’s core values is a crucial step in defining its culture and guiding its actions. Here are several methods you can use to identify these core values:
- Leadership Brainstorming Sessions: Gather key leaders and decision-makers within the organization for brainstorming sessions. Encourage open dialogue and discussion to identify values that reflect the organization’s beliefs, principles, and aspirations.
- Employee Surveys and Feedback: Conduct surveys or hold focus groups with employees at all levels of the organization to gather their input on what they believe are the core values of the organization. Employees’ perspectives can provide valuable insights into the existing culture and help identify shared values.
- Review Organizational History and Successes: Reflect on the organization’s history, successes, and defining moments. Identify common themes, behaviors, and principles that have contributed to the organization’s achievements. These can serve as indicators of core values.
- Customer and Stakeholder Feedback: Engage with customers, clients, partners, and other stakeholders to understand their perceptions of the organization and what values they associate with it. Their feedback can offer valuable perspectives on how the organization is perceived externally and what values resonate with stakeholders.
- Observation and Analysis: Observe the behaviors, actions, and decisions of individuals within the organization. Pay attention to patterns and recurring themes that reflect underlying values. Analyze organizational rituals, traditions, and communication to uncover implicit values.
- Benchmarking: Research and analyze the core values of other successful organizations, particularly those in your industry or with similar missions. Benchmarking can provide inspiration and help identify values that align with your organization’s goals and aspirations.
- Facilitated Workshops: Facilitate workshops or retreats with representatives from across the organization to explore and define core values collaboratively. Use structured exercises and activities to encourage participation and consensus-building.
- External Consultants or Experts: Engage external consultants or experts specializing in organizational culture and values to facilitate the process. Their expertise can provide valuable guidance and insights, particularly in navigating sensitive issues or facilitating difficult conversations.
Techniques to help you find your organization’s core values:
All of these techniques are great if you can get the correct people together to work through one of them.
Lists of Words
Here’s a list of some of the most common core values. Perhaps print a copy of this and do a quick scan though them striking out any that don’t resonate.
Now take a slowest pass through the words and look at the ones remaining and cut it down to 3-5 words that best describe your core values.
Brainstorming Session
- Have each person take a set of post-it notes and a sharpie (if you are in person), or create a Mural or similar whiteboard if you are remote.
- Have everyone write down 5 words that they would use to describe your culture.
- Now go around to each person and have them add one of their values to the board (if someone else has the same or similar value in their hand, have them add it to the board at that time, creating some groups of words).
- Keep going around until all the values are up on the board.
- Talk about the words on the board – are you happy with the groups / words? Change words or groups as needed.
- Are there any words (groups) that everyone has had the same thought on – if so these would be the start of your core value words.
- Next do some “dot voting” on the remaining values. Give everyone 2 dots (votes) to put on what core value would be the most important for them to have on the list. They can put both dots on the same group (or word) or put one dot on two different ones.
- Count up the votes and see which are the most popular words.
- Hopefully the last few steps have created a list of 3-5 words that the group is happy with.