A large mission-driven organization had values that previous leaders wrote without employee input, never defined, and rarely used. We recommended a refresh centered on a clear definition and a set of observable behaviors for each value, developed by a committee drawn from across the organization using employee survey results and the organization’s strategic priorities, with leadership selecting the final five. The organization also trained its employees and leaders to apply the values in everyday decisions.

What do employees do with values that a previous leadership team wrote without asking anyone, never defined, and rarely referred to again?

At this organization, the answer was that they largely set them aside. The values existed on paper and in a few communications, yet no one had explained what each one meant or what it looked like in someone’s work, so managers had nothing to point to and employees had nothing to follow. The organization was also working to strengthen its talent management and leadership skills, and its values were not yet part of that effort.

Why we recommended a refresh

We suggested the refresh after seeing how the current values were being used, and a workforce survey confirmed what we saw. About half of respondents said the values still felt right, and nearly all of the rest said some did and some did not. Only about one in seven said they knew the values well, and about one in five said people at the organization acted in ways that matched them. Open comments added that some statements were abstract, that some things employees cared about were missing, and that leaders did not always model the values they had set.

Those results shaped what we recommended. A rewrite alone would have repeated the original problem with different words, so we proposed a refresh with three parts: involve employees, define every value, and describe the behaviors that bring each one to life.

The definitions and behaviors are the work

Our position is that if you can only do one thing in a values refresh, you should define each value and spell out its behaviors, because the wording of the value matters far less than whether anyone can tell what it asks of them. A value without a definition is a slogan, and a slogan cannot be applied in a hiring decision, a performance conversation, or a difficult call at the end of a long week.

In this case, each value received a short description and a handful of behaviors that a colleague could see, in plain language specific to the organization. We coached the committee away from compliance dressed up as a value, since “follows procedures” is a job requirement and a value should ask for something beyond what the job already requires. Behaviors written this way give managers something to recognize, praise, and hold people to, and they give the organization something it can build into hiring, onboarding, performance conversations, and recognition.

Built with employees, with the roles stated up front

The earlier values had been created in a vacuum, so how the new ones were created mattered as much as what they said. We began by meeting with the organization’s leadership to understand its strategic priorities, since values that do not support where the organization is headed are unlikely to survive the next change in direction. We then formed a committee of employees from across the organization.

The committee reviewed the survey results alongside those strategic priorities and used both to build a list of candidate values. Small groups drafted candidates, the full group consolidated them into one working list, and a round of voting narrowed that list to a confirmed set. Leadership then selected the final five from the committee’s list, and the committee ordered them and shaped how they would be presented. Requiring every candidate value to connect to either what employees said or what the organization was trying to achieve kept the list grounded, and it kept out values that sounded good and meant little.

We also told the committee plainly and early what it did and did not decide. The committee built the list and leadership selected from it only, and we repeated that at every session. In our experience, committee members who learn the boundary late stop trusting the process, which undermines a refresh meant to rebuild credibility.

Optional add-on: training that puts the values to work

In this case, our client decided to have us train on the new values, while some organizations might prefer to handle it internally. We recommend considering it when the values are new to people, because definitions on a page still have to become habits, and training demonstrates how values are integrated into everyday work.

For this client, every individual contributor attended a workshop built around practice. Participants explored their own work values first, then examined each of the organization’s values through behaviors that show it and behaviors that undermine it, and then used a short decision model to work through realistic dilemmas in which values compete with each other and with workload, budget, and process. The dilemmas had no single right answer, because the goal was to practice reasoning with the values and not to memorize them.

Leaders took part in a separate track within their leadership development, built on similar concepts. We kept it separate because leaders face the same dilemmas with more visibility, and what they model is the evidence employees use to decide whether the values are real.

What we would tell a CHRO considering a refresh

Check whether your current values are defined, whether anyone outside the room where they were written had a say, and whether a manager could describe what each one looks like on a Tuesday afternoon. If the answer to any of those is no, the wording is probably not your problem.

Are your values something your people can describe and apply? Are they integrated into your talent system? Let’s talk through what a values refresh built on clear definitions and behaviors would look like for you, or explore our Talent Management Strategy & Consulting solutions page to learn more.

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