Please note that while this process worked for my team,  I am not implying that this is a best practice.   Instead I am simply documenting our experiences with this exercise.

I guess the first thing that you should do is read or listen to Managing by Values by Ken Blanchard and Michael O’Connor.   While a brief read, this book gives you a good framework for walking through the process of setting shared values and gives you some insight into what you might expect from your people.    Keep in mind though that once you get your team rolling on this you’ll find that the process is rather organic and your team will likely go off in directions that you didn’t anticipate. Let this happen, it’s kind of fun to watch.

After reading the book the next thing that you need to do is create “discussion groups”.  These groups should be around 8 people in size, I’ll use a hypothetical group of 32 as I document this process because the math is easy. 

Here are some things to think about when creating groups.

• In order to create the right groups you need to know your people pretty well,  if you don't then you'll have to get help from your managers in setting up groups. 
• Each group should have a nice mix of managers and individuals as well as quiet and vocal people.   Ideally if you have a manager who is strong willed or vocal you would match them up with your must courageous and vocal person so that their penchant for dominating discussions can be offset.
• While this won’t be completely unavoidable try to limit the number of manager/direct report pairs in your groups.
• Realize that groups will merge as you work through this process so group balance is important.   If for example group 1 is extremely strong willed and vocal but group 2 is quiet and weak then group 1 will dominate discussions and group 2 will feel that they are not really part of the shared values process.
• Groups of 8 need to be further divided into duos, then quads.  When setting up duos, never have a manager paired with someone in their organization. 
• Each of these four groups will have a group leader.   Ideally this leader won’t be a manager but someone who naturally steps to the head of the team due to natural leadership skills.  Don’t earmark a group leader until the discussions get rolling because you might be surprised who steps up.  Instead just structure your groups so that there is a person who you expect to step up in each group.  As you observe discussions you may be surprised as to who took a leadership role, I certainly was.

 Now that you have your groups set the next thing to do is schedule group meetings get this process rolling. Frankly this is the step where I have struggled the most but in my next entry I’ll at least be able to talk about some of the mistakes that I have made.