VA
Insights

In the last few years, organizations are spending more efforts on specifying and disseminating unique values, as clear value statement helps shape its brand image and attract talents. But even organizations with clear values are not strange to the following scenarios:

Scenario 1: An organization highlights its value of “unity and collaboration” on its official website. However, the selected “Star Performer” is well known for his “sole focus on departmental KPI, and rejection to share resources with others”.

Scenario 2: In another organization, two people are having conflict working together. One is expert in project operation, but does not get much promotion opportunities. The other does great job in making speeches, but does not really understand daily operations. Both of them believe that they are adhering to the company value “serving the public”.

Many organizations are aware of a value statement, but not many truly understand the value of having explicit organizational values. One reason is that people generally think values are too abstract to be elicited; the other reason is that result of value elicitation cannot be measured.

In September 2017, Venture Avenue was invited by a renowned family foundation to sort out its organizational value system. We believe this is critical to the Foundation’s development at three aspects:

1. To ensure team stability
Achieving public good takes time. If the team cannot be united at ideological level, stability cannot be guaranteed. In the process of value elicitation, team are provided with an environment to equally express and listen, so as to eliminate cognitive ambiguity. Meanwhile, the results of value elicitation also provide a new direction for team development and construction.

2. To reflect the family personality
As a family foundation, the donating family’s will and personality contribute to its fundamental values.

3. To inherit cultural legacy.
People or projects won’t remain the same forever. Only a unified organizational value system can be passed on. The idea of eliciting values is to allow every employee to have a clear understanding of what they are doing and where they are heading for, so that the cultural legacy of the organization can live forever.

You may now ask “How to do it”. Let’s take the same scenarios above as two examples:

In Scenario 1, the organization and members do not practice the values of “unity and cooperation”. This is a symptom of “organizational values being disrespected”. What we do is to explore and locate organizational values with a series of WeValue workshops and the “WeValue Value Indicator System”. With this methodology, the organizational value system are derived from every team member, thus will be appreciated.

In Scenario 2, people practice differently while they still believe they are following the same values. This is a symptom of “members’ recognition of organizational values being superficial”.
Our methodology utilizes the “WeValue Value Indicator System” to elicit and communicate values, to make sure they are specific, practical, and measurable. Therefore, the elicited values will not cause ambiguity or misunderstanding.

We hope more organizations can recognize the importance of values, better articulate their values by taking a scientific and participatory approach, and achieve greater efficiency and impact.