Just as it is hugely important for us to be clear on – and fully live – our individual values, organizations must be intentional on defining their values and authentically bringing them to life in their culture and operations. I’ll outline one approach I have used with Nike teams and offices across Europe and how we redefined Zalando’s organizational values.

Organizational Values. What Are They Exactly?

A quick refresher. Organizational values are the fundamental beliefs upon which a business and its behavior are based. They are the guiding principles that an organization uses to manage its internal affairs as well as its relationship with their customers. They reflect what a company believes in and stands for.

Why Values Are Important

There are many reasons why having clear, defined values are business critical for your organization:

Supports your vision and intentionally shapes your culture
Helps ensure that all your employees are working towards the same goals
Attracts more candidates and customers you want to have as they look more and more to favor companies whose values align with their own personal values
Enables you to form a solid brand identity and sets the tone for how you interact with customers, market your products, and make important decisions

How to Select and Define Your Values

There are a variety of ways for you to choose your values. I will outline an effective process that I have used with many groups I have supported in this work. It was designed to be as inclusive as possible to maximize the number of voices and perspectives in making the selection. It was also designed to be able to analyze how aligned the individual values are with the values – both current and desired – of the team/organization to ensure more alignment and to get a sense of how much of a shift is desired by employees.

Step 1: Send out a values survey

A list of values was created for all employees to make their selections from. (I’m happy to share this list with anyone. Send me a message if interested). From this list, an online survey was sent out for them to choose the top 5 values for:

Themselves as individuals
What they think they currently stand for as a team/organization
What they desire to stand for

To ensure as many voices are heard and involved in the creation/modification of the values, this survey is the best approach. If you have employees who work in your factories, warehouses, or stores, you may need to find a creative approach to allow them to make their selections if they don’t have a NT login. They are your employees as well and should have an equal say in shaping your values as your office employees.

Following is an example of a survey result:

From this work, we were able to see how much alignment (or not) existed between employees and where they worked. Research has shown that when this strong alignment exists, employees are more fulfilled and engaged because they see the connection of shared values between themselves and where they work. It also initially showed which perceived values employees wanted to maintain and remix moving forward to know how much organizational culture change would be needed to drive the desired results.

Step 2: Share the initial results and workshop it

In working with a team to define their team values, it is a simpler process. Share the results with them and have a discussion around what they saw and explore what modifications may be needed to the desired list to make their final decision. Throughout the discussion, it will be important to ensure that everyone has a voice and a say in the discussion. The leader shouldn’t overly influence or steer the discussions to their preferences.

Whether you are doing this work with teams or the whole organization, there are questions you can ask during the workshop to support them in their discussions and narrow down their list:

What principles should guide our choices?
What core values will resonate with us and our customers – internal or external?
What do we want to be known for?
How will our values distinguish us from other teams/competitors?

You should aim for around 5 core values. If there are more, the likelihood that everyone can remember them all is not likely. If it can’t be remembered, what’s the point in having it in the first place.

When developing your organization’s values, there are many more steps needed before the final selection is made. More workshops will be needed between a targeted group of employees, representing difference functions, and senior leaders to gather inputs, share perspectives of the other group to continue to refine and come to a final alignment on the list of core values. It will help to keep these groups separate so senior leaders don’t influence too much in the selection process.

Step 3: Final review

Before confirming your core values and deciding how you want to express them, a couple of things to check:

Is there a right mix between values more linked to survival and service? If there are too many from one side, it could be detrimental to the organization. You need to be able to deliver results to exist and you need to aspire to serve others to inspire and engage your people, partners and customers.
Are they unique to you and your culture and not too generic that could describe any organization?
Do you have a good mix of authentic and aspirational values to reflect what you stand for today as well as in the future?
Have we made a decision regardless of economic conditions, external incentives, competitive advantage, or corporate trends?

Step 4: Expressing your values

There are a variety of ways you can express your values. Some companies choose just one word to express each value. Others will create a slogan for each. You will need to choose what will work best in your culture. Whichever approach you take, make sure you provide some definition or further context so others can better understand the meaning and expectation behind each value. Some points to keep in mind as you write them:

Use your brand voice to explain them for consistency of tone that you use externally
Keep the description simple and clear
Allow some room for interpretation to make it culturally relevant for your international offices

Here are some examples:

American Express:
- Customer commitment, quality, integrity, teamwork, respect for people, good citizenship, a will to win, personal accountability.
Build-A-Bear:
- Reach, Learn, Di-bear-sity, Colla-bear-ate, Give, Cele-bear-ate
H&M:
- We believe in people, we are one team, straightforward and open-minded, keep it simple, entrepreneurial spirit, constant improvement, cost-consciousness
Virgin Airlines:
- We think customer, we lead the way, we do the right thing, we are determined to deliver, together we make a difference.

For a more extensive list, visit here.

Now that your organization has defined their values, the next step is to launch it. A similar approach I outlined in a previous post on launching a company’s purpose statement can be followed when introducing your values to your people. The next step in your journey is to further embed them into your culture and operations. We will explore how to best do this in a future post.

#values #organizationvalues

What Does Your Company Stand For?