As you work in organisations, you will be familiar with values and principles. However, there is often a big misunderstanding about what these mean.
To understand the bucket of values, principles, and behaviours, we unpack how to...
To conceptualise what values, principles and behaviours mean to an organization, we must first define them.
A value is a virtue which frames beliefs. Some examples of values may be truth, honesty, or excellence. It is something that can be believed in.
A principle is a guiding rule or guideline that is built off one or many values.
A behaviour is something we do because of the principle.
Values and principles create the alignment in worldview for the organisation. They reflect the purpose, vision and emphasis on what matters most for how the team come together to do their work.
Not setting clear values and principles may be unrecoverable.
If there’s been no discussion around defining the principles, then values get played like cards.
Your team start adopting the values when it suits them at any point in time. This means that they are not acting to the values, they are using values to play cards to justify actions.
It’s the principles that add meat to values. It gives us the guidelines. The framework in which to operate.
You can take two or three values to articulate a principle.
A value is a virtue or that guides our beliefs. A principle is a rule or guideline that is built on that value - the classic adage in business is that the customer is always right.
Waymaker is built on the assumptions and beliefs of our worldview assumptions that form the iceberg of our mental models - that's the point where the value sits above the organisational structure and practices.
That’s where principles start to come alive.
There is an infinite number of behaviours that could fit a value.
We want you to create values and principles that sets your team up to know exactly what behaviour is or isn’t acceptable without having the check the rule book.
Waymaker helps you get better clarity to build alignment. We want you to be on the same bus going to the same destination and deliver the same results along the way.
If you’re working with a coach or consultant, they will take you through the conversation of values, principles, and behaviours.
You can jump in Waymaker Academy to explore it yourself and have that conversation.
When you’re onboarding and working with a team, everyone knows what the values, principles and values are - which become a conversation starter. The steps to this are...
1. Use the Waymaker toolkits to work through values
2. Document it, bring clarity to it inside Waymaker
During your annual or quarterly planning sessions, you can work through these elements and plan for them to be implemented throughout the organization.
The behaviour piece is the most important thing.
The culture piece is the value and principles that people can refer to.
