We offer a service to assess your values as an individual, team or whole business. We will help you discover your driving values, to articulate them in an inspirational way and to turn walking your talk into a competitive advantage.
Values are those things which we most care about, the things that really motivate us. Values give us direction and help us make decisions. For a team or organisation, shared values form the basis of alignment, cooperation and enable large groups to work together effectively to achieve their shared mission.
Having values which are truly lived as opposed to just being written on a piece of paper, enables self organisation and delegation. Royal Navy personnel are trained to embody the values of C2DRIL- courage, commitment, discipline, loyalty, integrity and respect. Values form part of our inner compass and map which will enable people to think on their feet, adapt and take the initiative without being told what to do.
If we know what drives others, then we can understand their needs, predict their behaviour, communicate with them more effectively and know how best to make use of their talents. Good business value creates value through higher customer satisfaction and loyalty, brand value and productivity.
For example, why is the City of London one of the premier places for people all over the world to put their money, make investments, buy insurance and make legal contracts? It comes down to trust. People trust that their money will be safe. The rules will be fairly applied. The law will be upheld. The government is unlikely to steal your assets.
Some business leaders think that focussing on values is a nice thing to do, but it doesn't affect the bottom line and therefore it's not worthy of much investment of time or money. The reason for that is that the financial value of good business values is taken for granted during periods of success and often only becomes apparent very painfully when things go wrong.
When Arthur Andersen, which previously had a fantastic reputation for high standards in accounting, was caught up in the Enron scandal, they lost their company, its reputation and financial value very quickly.
Volkswagen shocked the world when they were found to have been systematically cheating on the exhaust emission tests. This had a major effect on their reputation, stock price and some executives lost their jobs. It has cost at least US$30billion already. However, interestingly, the company are still strong and this is because their engineering values of reliability, quality and value for money were not affected by the scandal and so it remains resilient.
Companies like Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and Google had an astonishing rise based on the values of openness, connection, freedom and empowerment. Their workplace values of allowing employees to be who they want to be, informality and flexibility enabled them to attract high quality talent at a lower price than companies with less attractive values. However, these companies have a dark side, also part of their values, which shows up in their tax policies, monopolistic behaviour and censorship of free speech. They haven't yet felt the financial cost of this yet, but they will do.
Likewise, leadership values are easily taken for granted until they are transgressed. When President Clinton had his Monica Lewinsky moment, he was enjoying some of his private values, but in doing so let down his wife and offended voters with traditional values. However, the real damage was done by lying about it afterwards. If he had just said, "I made a mistake, I let down my wife and I'm really sorry about that," and if people believed that he sincerely meant it then it would've been a small bump in the road. Instead, he denied it and it became an issue of dishonesty and lack of trust which marred the rest of his Presidency.
Sometimes people are cynical about expressions of business values because they can appear to be fake, saying nice things but not really meaning them. That certainly can be counter-productive. We believe strongly that the values should be authentic and include not just "nice" values like kindness, respect and sustainability, but also honestly reflect competitive values like money, power, status and success.
This Master Code helps explain and predict human behaviour. It has been used by practitioners on all continents of the world in many domains, including politics, culture, conflict resolution, coaching, military, education, organisational development, personal development, law enforcement and training.
Once you understand it, so many things become clear. You can see the underlying architecture of human nature, the psychological DNA, which makes leadership, organisation, communication, relationships and politics much more straightforward. When you understand the values of your team and your customers, it's easier to create successful products and services and lead effective organisation.
Benefits
- Avoid costly scandals
- More effective leadership
- Attract like-minded customers
- More effective branding, sales and marketing
- Team alignment, motivation, engagement
- Better communication
- Enables delegation and self organisation
- Attract and retain the right kind of employees
- Prioritise what is important
- Better, easier decision making
- A more coherent, cohesive culture
- Cooperate better with business partners
- Reduces the need for bureaucracy and control
- Enables growth, adaptability and evolution
Applications
- Personal development
- Leadership development
- Top team alignment
- Team building
- Sales and marketing
- Recruitment and retention
- Engagement of staff
- Stakeholder relationship management and conflict resolution
- Political strategy
- Strategy formulation and development
- Organisational design
2. Values assessment
- There is a menu of options depending on the needs of the client:
- For individuals and teams, we do an initial assessment of values to discover the top values for the individuals, team or business.
- A 360 degree assessment of leadership values using anonymous feedback from your chosen network.
- Customer, culture and stakeholder assessments
3. Values facilitation
- We facilitate conversations to discover those powerful stories which bring the values to life, such as peak moments, key decisions or foundational stories where the values were created or discovered. This generates clarity, prioritises the value and applies them to the particular business need. During this process, we notice the links between the different priority values and the overall story begins to emerge.
4. Values alignment
- For groups, it is necessary to find shared values. Individuals have their own personal interests and values, but for a organisation, business or team, there have to be common values which enable them to cooperate. Where this is not is the case or whether there is disharmony or disagreements, at the very least, it is important to know and ideally to achieve healthy agreement on the core values.
- Individuals discover how they can live their personal values while working to deliver the business' goals and living its values. There is a natural tension and sometimes compromise between personal interests and values. Part of this process is for the individual to find how best to do that without compromising their heart or spirit and for the leaders and organisation to create conditions to enable that.
- The business vision and strategy should be aligned with these values.
5. Values integration- Walking the Talk
- Once it is clear what the values are, it is essential to make sure that they run like a thread throughout all of your behaviour, services, leadership, culture, mission and organisation. This can be done in workshop format or through feedback, facilitation and coaching. We help leaders create an actionable plan for this.
6. Values communication
- We help participants to distill and articulate their values for maximum clarity, ease of communication and inspiration.
7. Values evolution and adjustment
- Naturally, this process will bring to a head some decisions and adjustments that need to be made. Some people may wish to leave. Others may wish to join. It may become clear that certain products or services need to be changed or dropped. Such changes can be minor adjustments or major transformations depending on the context. This can happen by design or natural evolution.
8. Reports and Presentations
- Individuals, teams and organisations will receive a summary of their own priority values, the shared group values and they will have a workbook to articulate their personal stories and communications.
Adan's executive coaches have decades of experience working at the executive level with leading organizations around the world. We have expertise in leadership, productivity, organizational change, team building, marketing, sales and motivation.
Our on-the-job experience coupled with extensive knowledge of the markets and functional areas enables us to deliver a variety of practical, high-impact presentations that engage, enlighten and entertain.
