Defining Values

Introduction

Values are the fundamental beliefs and guiding principles of a person or an organisation. They support the vision and mission, shape the organisational culture and reflect what an organisation stands for.

Why

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The toolkit Defining Values is useful when your organisation:

• needs to develop its identity and the values it stands for.
• has expanded and needs to strengthen the organisational culture through values.
• needs ways to clearly articulate its philosophy, methods, and goals to stakeholders and team members.

What you can expect

In six steps we guide you to form your organisational values. Here you’ll find a step-by-step guide, tools, examples and other resources for defining your values.

Step 1: Establish Need

• Discuss the need to define or review the organisation's values with the leaders and key staff members.
• Watch this online lecture by the University of Ghana about how values, beliefs, operating principles and the image of NGOs are related.

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Step 2: Planning Workshop

• Plan a workshop/brainstorm session on values in which all key members of the organisation will participate. Create a combination of leaders and staff to participate. The workshop needs to be customised to the needs of the organisation and the level of the team members.
• Ask the participants, prior to the session, to read about values so that they understand how values play an important role in the organisation’s culture.
• Ask participants to complete a values worksheet, so that they start thinking about their own values and the use of values.
• Give participants an example of a values statement to inspire them. You can look at the examples in this toolkit for materials.

Step 3: Facilitation of workshop

• Ask each participant to think about the 'personality' of the organisation: how we treat colleagues and beneficiaries, how we handle setbacks, what attitudes we hold in the daily work, etc. Vote for the three or four values that best exemplify it. Refer to the values worksheet words list and explain that if they feel values from the list are not appropriate, that they can choose their own values.
• Tally votes. Select the top three or four values and discuss why these were chosen. Ask the team for examples for situations to demonstrate these values and why they are important to the organisation.
• Review the definitions of values chosen with the team to ensure that they are the most apt descriptions. Modify if needed, including taking a re-vote if necessary.

Step 4: Document Values

• Formulate the definitions of the core values chosen in the workshop. Explain what each value means to the organisation and exemplify it.
• Write out each value in a clear and concise statement that is relatable to people both in- and outside the organisation. Each statement should be two or three sentences.
• Have the values statements approved by the leaders and/or board if necessary.
• Refine the values and statements if required.

Step 5: Presentation of Values

• Present the finalised values to the organisation. Everyone should have a copy of the statements.
• Facilitate a brief session to discuss a strategy for ways to incorporate core values in the organisation’s day to day operations, if this has not happened already in the previous session.
• Create ways to recognise and celebrate values and incentivise staff who strongly demonstrate values.
• Create constant reminders of values in daily office life, such as displaying posters with visual representations of each value if possible at the office.

Step 6: Follow-up and Support

• Encourage the management team to refer to value statements before major decisions or transitions are made in any area.
• Incorporate values in various policies and procedures of the organisation like appraisal systems, recruitment policies, expansion decisions etc.
• Refer to values for difficult situations, as and when they arise, so that values are embedded in the day to day life of the organisation.
• Watch this short video for inspiration to bring organisational values to life every day:

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Key To Success

• Defining values can be done by strengthening the existing values.
• Participation of the entire team in the workshop will help them own the values, and encourage them to ‘live the values’. Ownership from the team is key.
• It is important to follow up on the workshop and support the organisation to clearly define each value and how it can be demonstrated.

Challenges

• It can be difficult to getting the entire team clearly defining and articulating the organisation's core values.