In my last post I promised to outline the process that our team went through in setting and attempting to live by shared values.   However in thinking about writing this I came to the conclusion that there are a few things that need to be in place before undertaking this exercise, so I’ll start there.

Your team must be behind you.  Before beginning this exercise it is important that a significant number of team members are willing to follow you,  even though they might be skeptical about what you are about to undertake.  This isn’t to say that your team needs to be blindly loyal but you’ll need some slack because there will be plenty of doubt from the masses as this will this exercise will be unlike anything they have ever done.

You must already have set a clear vision for your team.  Without a clear vision and clear goals setting values really won’t help.  Make sure that each and every person in your org understands your vision as well as you do. There may be times when your vision is not clear, if this is the case be real, don’t try to sell a cloudy vision or a vision that you don’t believe in.

Your leaders must be committed - This exercise will take some time.  For a team of 44 we spent 5 hours per person in meetings.   In addition as the process gains steam there will be plenty of hallway conversations and additional ad hoc meetings. The leaders in your org must allow this to happen and understand that they may lose a bit of productivity for a month or so. 

Your leaders must be humble – When we went through this process we made the decision to ask all leaders and managers to participate in the exercise.   At the time I felt that this was the only way to make it stick.   I was wrong about this because the people who steps up and drove this exercise were generally not the people who I looked to for leadership (this changed as I watched them during this exercise).  The leaders in your org must be humble enough to participate at a peer level with all individuals on the team while not dominating the process.

Don’t plan to control this process – When we started this process we initially thought that I would be driving and controlling it, however we quickly learned that this was simply not going to happen because the discussion groups took care of themselves.  I was quickly relegated to scheduling meetings then staying out of the way.  This was an exercise “of the people” which is one of the reasons it was so successful