What are values?

Core values should be thought of as non-negotiable guidance for general behaviour and specific decisions. They work on a subconscious level in the organisation but can also be called upon consciously when facing tough decisions.

Core values are not the only values that the organisation should live by, but they are called out as the most important ones, and the ones where we should expect a high level of alignment from each other.

It can be easy to get confused between Core Values and Brand Values – they are most definitely not the same things. When developing core values there is no need for them to be unique, or to stand out from competition. The best approach is for them to be truly authentic.

Why values?

Expressing values at every opportunity can help align our organisation with others, and individuals, who share those values. For example: clients, suppliers, peers, media and employees. When values are aligned with another party it can be really easy to wok with them, and can be simpler to overcome obstacles or conflict than if working with companies whose values are quite different.

Values can provide guidance for decisions at all levels of the organisation, even for employees in junior position on their first day.

Values can also help provide a sense of belonging in an organisation, a feeling that employees are around people they can trust and be their whole selves.

Discovery vs Setting

We need discovering values, rather than set them. If you want them to have meaning then that’s exactly what you need to do. Each of us already have a set of values that we hold as more important to us than others. For an organisation to be values-based we need to discover individual values and look for a good level of crossover that we can all align to, weighing up those individual values depending on the hierarchy / lack of hierarchy that already exists.

Once values are discovered and expressed then it becomes easy to bring new people into the organisation that already share these values. For some existing employees the transition may be tricky but if the discovery process has been thorough, then this should only be a minority of people.

Embodiment

It’s all very well discovering and publishing values but what we’re really aiming for is for them to be truly integrated into the organisation. Too many companies write down their values and then they sit on a website and a few office walls but are never discussed or celebrated.

I generally find that most smaller organisations and startups are very much values-driven, even if they haven’t yet done the work to discover and express them. As these organisations grow it can feel like things are changing, and that all employees do not truly embody the same values as the founders. 

This is the moment where working with values become critical for the organisation, to develop and maintain the organisation’s SOUL.

Our Values History

In 2016, at Rosie Lee, we began a journey of developing our Value Pyramid.

The initial aim was to create a deeper meaning to our strategy work, and to align teams.

Since then we ended up spending a lot of time discussing and expressing our values, including 2 values workshops at our group-wide summer conferences.

Our values have helped everyone understand what was meaningful for the organisation and employees embraced them more and more as their understanding developed.

Against Time

The latest organisation in the Rosie Lee Group to discover and publish its values is Against Time.

Mystic Blend worked closely with Against Time to share our expertise and processes, and to directly hold some of the team sessions required to discover values.

We’re really proud of these values, and the work MB & AT has done in getting to these. Having worked closely with the Against Time team over the last year, I feel like these core values are truly aligned to the team and their culture.

Find out more specifics about the values here.

Here are the Against Time values:

01 – Embrace The Chaos

02 – Prioritise Honesty

03 – Be Yourself

04 – Appreciate Balance

05 – Think Positive

06 – Learn Continuously

Discover
Your Values

This course
breaks down
into 3 parts.

Part 1: Knowledge & Understanding

• what are core values?
• what are core values not?
• why are values important to an organisation.
• the life benefits of knowing our own core values
• how an organisation’s core values interact with individual values.
• investigation of where and how values might be used in your organisation.

Part 2: Values Discovery & Publishing

• design values-setting process based on your organisation’s hierarchy
• multi-stage discovery process.
• crafting and communicating values.
• committing to where values will show up in your organisation’s communications, recruitment, interactions.

Part 3: Established

• co-create launch plan for values.
• implementation of values as an initial launch.
• ongoing monitoring of values and their related successes and failures.

Work with
Mystic Blend

If you decide you would like to work with Mystic Blend in theory, implementation and/or integration of values then we have a variety of ways we can support you in your efforts.

To find out more, contact Russell. After an initial consultation to find out more about your organisation and your needs, we will understand how we can help you.

Taking our leadership questionnaire can be a good first step, to understand whether discovering values is the most important next step for your organisation.