What makes up your dream team?
BY Evelyn Jackson (CEO and Creative Director)
Alignment between personal and company values leads to a team that is connected and working together. It really is that simple.
Brand and Company values articulate what a company believes in. The deeply held principles, and ideals that the people within the organisation hold.
The Vision of the company tells your employees WHY you exist – the inherit purpose drawing customers and employees in.
The Mission of the company tells your employees WHAT you are trying to accomplish – leading to your strategic goals now and in the future.
The Values of the company tells your employees HOW you wish to operate – both as a collective and each person – internally and with your customers.
You may think these are easy to come by, easy to communicate and easy to implement. And they can be – but alignment is hard. Because unlike the Vision and Mission, values are not something you can craft in a boardroom and behaviours are harder to measure, harder to control, harder to change. For company values to work, you need to understand and be clear on the Vision and Mission. But equally, if not more important is to understand what your employees value in the organisation.
Your dream team may be easier to come by with brand and company values that are authentic to the deeply held principles and beliefs held by the employees you hire; and influenced by the Vision and Mission. Building a dream team that hums starts with the Development, Communication and Integration of your values.
1. Development
One way to achieve this is to use a diagnostic such as Barrett Values. Followed by in depth research and appreciative enquiry to understand your team. This will support the development of authentic brand and company values that your employees and your customers align to.
2. Communication
Once developed, communicate them across multiple platforms in the business to effectively reach different audiences. Think company websites, personal collateral/ merchandise, all internal workspaces, intranet, social media, hold training events, webinars, townhalls, meetings and one to ones. Communication of any newly developed values requires consistent communication across all platforms.
3. Integration
Finally, reward individuals and teams for demonstrating the values and the behaviours that go along with them. Manage performance across the organisation using the values as a base for performance management processes. Build the values and behaviours into learning programs for managers and individuals. This is where you truly begin to embed the values of the organisation in the everyday. Build the values into every aspect of the employee life cycle – from recruitment to exit.
It is not enough for employees to able to recite what the values are, (although this is a first major step for many companies). Measure the HOW in the same way you measure the organisations’s commercial success and see the difference.
“In a world where working from home is becoming a norm and behaviours not always possible to be observed, developing, communicating and integrating company values is no longer a nice to have.”