About The Values Foundation Values Audit

The Values Foundation Values Audit is an offering that provides a programmatic way of initiating a project-contextualized frame that engages, enfranchises, and empowers the people comprising the client organization. This is achieved by forming an Initiative Team, comprised of volunteers from across the organization. This Team is empowered and resourced to develop and catalyze manifestation of a richly interconnected adaptive and living organizational nervous system, in service to establishment of a human being and values centered organizational enactive consciousness.

This nervous system connects all of the employees of the organization to each other, and the centers of gravity that determine the organization’s future course, actions, and purpose alignment. Establishment of this nervous system enables true emergent organizational awakening, on a human and experiential level; with integration of alignment of values and purpose as a dynamic dimension of organizational evolution.

Through values alignment, the individuals comprising the organization can experience enhanced alignment of purpose and meaningfulness of value contribution, both to the organization, and to the world the organization serves. As a consequence of this experience, exponential human generative potential is realized.

BIS’ Unique Difference

• All BIS Initiatives are co-created with and self-organized by the people of the client organization, in service to, and for the benefit of all individuals, teams, divisions, and the organization as a whole.

• All Initiatives are designed, organized, and executed exclusively utilizing internal pre-existing resources. Minimal external resources or additional expenditures are required.

• Transformative effects are realized from the moment we are engaged, based on agreement to the terms and conditions of our retainer.

• Transformative effects are self-propagating, self-reinforcing, flexible, and adaptive, as a dynamic experiential dimension of the living organization.

The above is achieved by three distinct Offering Stages: The Values Audit, The Values Agreement, and The Values Checklist.

Terms of Engagement

The transformational power and impact of The Values Audit, Agreement and Checklist are enabled by the Terms of Engagement of BIS.

BIS is a Values Foundation Certified Service Provider. Unlike traditional business consulting services, we have identified an array of essential terms and conditions required to enable true profound organizational transformation to occur. These are:

• Top leadership commitment to prioritization of the Values Audit initiative for its duration.

• Unqualified empowerment of those charged with execution of the initiative, accompanied by written guarantees of zero risk of loss of position, status, benefits, entitlements, nor career progression within the client organization, as a result of volunteering to join the Initiative team.

• Priority access to enterprise resources when and as necessary in support of the initiative; with expedited procedures for handling of resource requisitions enterprise-wide.

• Absence of any impositional time constraints, reporting requirements, oversight or management of the Initiative team.

• Minimum BIS engagement commitment is for the duration of the then current Stage of Service Offering, as defined below in the Offering Stage description.

Initiative Stages

Stage I: The Values Audit

Immediately following execution of the BIS Retainer Agreement, the BIS team meets with HR counterparts (“HR”) to map the organization’s departments and operational units from which the Initiative Team members are to be invited and enrolled. The BIS Initiative Team and HR then co-create the Initiative Brief, invitation, and supporting documentation. HR and the BIS Team will then enroll volunteers to form the Values Audit Team.

The Values Audit Team is then provided with an experiential introduction to BIS’ Emergent Conversation practice, an introduction and orientation regarding the Values Audit, self-organization, purpose and values alignment; and integration of human being-centered consciousness and praxis. Upon completion of the Values Audit Team orientation and alignment, the Initiative design and implementation processes can begin.

The Initiative charge, for the Values Audit Team is:

• To research, aggregate, and document the expressed, perceived, and experienced Values of the client organization by:

• Collecting all explicit expressions, by the organization, in all media and channels of communication, of its declared values;

• Researching and aggregating all third person public statements reflecting external perceptions of the organization’s actual values, as reflected in actions, impacts, and consequences of the organization’s contribution to the world;

• Research the internal tacit, explicit, and experiential expression of the organization’s values, through the perceptions and lived experiences of the employees of the company, with the aspiration to include every single employee comprising the organization.

• Develop the internal bi-directional communication network, as a company-wide nervous system, to facilitate the internal experiential narrative and qualitative data from those employed by the Company.

• Upon completion of the research above, the Value Audit Team is then charged with preparation of a Value Audit Report and Presentation; and, to present the findings to the whole organization, from the Board of Directors to the loading dock or mail room workers.

This represents completion of Stage I of The Values Audit Initiative.

Stage II: The Values Agreement

Upon completion of the Values Audit, Stage II seeks to energize a company-wide engagement and conversation in service to:

• Acknowledge the gap between the stated values, and the manifest and enacted values as reflected by the company’s culture as experienced by its people; and how the company’s values are actually perceived by those in its business ecosystem, and the world beyond.

• To develop a means and mechanism to enable development of a new, aligned values statement, contributed to and co-created through an open process that enables and invites input, contribution, and engagement by every employee in the Company.

• Based on the above process, enable creation of a formal Agreement embodying the aggregate new values statement and a mechanism for explicit written execution by every employee in the Company, reflecting a commitment to actively monitoring and enforcement of Company alignment to those values going forward.

• To memorialize that commitment in a Company-wide ceremonial event that recurs annually; and that enables aggregative additions to the Values Agreement, as it is a living, evolving dimension of Corporate purpose, identity, and action.

Ceremonial acknowledgment and celebration of the signing of the Values Agreement represents the completion of this Stage.

Stage III: The Values Checklist

Upon completion of the Values Agreement, the Initiative Team is charged with the development of a Values Checklist. The Checklist involves creation of an enterprise network integrated tool, designed to leverage the nervous system created in the Values Audit Stage, and integrate the values adopted in the Values Agreement Stage, to enable:

• Creation and validation of new decisions, actions, programs, and initiatives alignment with adopted values; and signalling in the event of violation of those values requiring revision or replacement prior to implementation. This services to integrate values, as a living dynamic applied practice within all operational decision making and operational activities.

• Identification of past and current decisions, policies, and actions determined to be out of alignment with the terms of the new Values Agreement; in service to prioritization of remediation, replacement, or abandonment action initiatives to bring the Company into values alignment.

• A real time context specific mechanism for individual identification of and contribution to evolution of the Company’s values and values alignment, via channels of feedback, signaling, acknowledgment and processing of challenges, conflicts or discrepancies requiring attention.

Implementation of the Values Checklist represents the completion of this Stage and the formal Values Audit process.