VA
Insights

Project Background:
Client A is an IT company dedicated to building future-oriented innovative education ecosystem. It has three business units which cover different educational scenarios from campus, business to online platform. The company expect to create and realize a shared educational vision, that is, to cultivate people with value of ‘inside out’.

Client A is faced with the following problems:
Employees don’t know how their daily work is related to the company’s long-term vision.
During the startup phase, everything changes fast. When the company strategy keeps iterating, employees tend to confuse about where their current positions are in the strategic map.
The company has an urgent need to increase communication between different business units to create more effective and efficient teamwork.

To solve these problems, Venture Avenue was invited to organize and host WeValue workshop to inspire the whole company to discuss values. Based on these preliminary output, VA then crystallized the company’s value, optimized and upgraded strategy from version 1.0 to version 2.0, and communicated it to all staff.

Our Methods:

The workshop lasted 4 days and was divided into 5 steps:

Preparation
Before VA’s participation, the company drafted the strategic plan version 1.0.

Whole team value seminar
Client A intend to involve all the staff into value discussion. Since every Wevalue workshop has the limitation of 10 participants, VA designed a customized mechanism. Firstly, screen 8 “Seed Team” members in the company and train them leading skills. Then each member of “Seed Team” become a group leader to lead the discussion with their 8 people seminar. Experienced team members from VA monitored and took control of the whole process.

Management team value redefining meeting
After fully listening to the true voice of the team, seed team members brought their learning into the management workshop, obtained consensus through professional guidance and made the further decision of company value system.

Strategy upgrading
Based on the value system, the management team reflected on strategy V1.0 and upgraded to strategy V2.0.

Company strategy communication
Communication: Communicate the value system and strategy 2.0 to the whole company.
Landing: work team leaders lead their members selecting 3 core values from company value system that matter the most to them, and make action plans.
Reflection: work team present their understanding of company strategy through 3D sandbox model and locate the position of the team in it.

Project Outcome:
Through questionnaires and post-workshop interviews, the 4-day project has 7 main achievements:

1. Finding the blind spot of the strategy: When upgrading strategy to V2.0, we discovered a blind spot-lack of internal training. Many employees are eager to learn and regard self-development as their main driving force of working. Realizing the necessity of “Resisting foreign aggression after stabilizing the country”, the management team lay more emphasis on training in their strategy V2.0

2. Strengthening the sense of collective identity: Although we belong to different departments, we have so many shared value propositions.

3. Improve mutual understanding: It turns out that my colleagues are so interesting. We never have the opportunity to know each other like this.

4. Respect and listening: All members are involved and listened. Colleagues express their feelings of being respected and valued.

5. Empowering the middle level: being crucial parts of “Seed Team”, the middle level staff improved their ability through training and practice.

6. Deepen understanding of the strategy: Before the communication workshop, half of the employees said that they were confused about the overall strategy of their company. While after, the questionnaire result showed that all staff have obtained a certain degree of awareness.

7. Landing: Value guides strategy, and strategy lands to action plans. It becomes direct and measurable.

The questionnaires showed that employees have significantly improved the value identity of themselves and others.