The Values Audit
It Starts with the Terms of our Engagement
The above is achieved via four distinct Offering Stages: Terms of Engagement, The Values Audit, The Values Agreement, and The Values Checklist.
Stage I: Terms of Engagement
The transformational power and impact of The Values Audit, Agreement and Checklist are enabled by the Terms of Engagement of Being in Systems Values Audit engagement.
Unlike traditional business consulting service providers, we have identified an array of essential terms and conditions required to enable true profound organizational transformation to occur via a Values Audit. These are:
Stage II: The Values Audit
On close of the Engagement Agreement, the Being in Systems 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 Being in Systems Team and HR then co-create the Initiative Brief, Invitation, and supporting documentation. HR and the Being in Systems Team will then enroll volunteers to form the Values Audit Team, which is drawn from across all operating divisions and departments, assuring full representation of all internal constituencies.
The Values Audit Team is then provided with an experiential introduction to Being in Systems 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:
Stage III: The Values Agreement
Stage III seeks to energize a company-wide engagement and conversation in service to:
Stage IV: The Values Checklist
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, to enable:
- All Being in Systems Initiatives are co-created with, and self-organized by the people of your organization. If they create it, they own it and will nurture and protect it.
- All Initiatives are designed, organized, and executed utilizing internal pre-existing resources. Minimal external resources or capital expense, if any, is required.
- Transformative effects are realized from the moment we are engaged; as negotiation of the terms of our retainer incorporates the seeds of the transformation to come.
- Transformative effects are self-propagating, self-reinforcing, flexible, and adaptive, as a dynamic experiential dimension of the living organization.
The above is achieved via four distinct Offering Stages: Terms of Engagement, The Values Audit, The Values Agreement, and The Values Checklist.
Stage I: Terms of Engagement
The transformational power and impact of The Values Audit, Agreement and Checklist are enabled by the Terms of Engagement of Being in Systems Values Audit engagement.
Unlike traditional business consulting service providers, we have identified an array of essential terms and conditions required to enable true profound organizational transformation to occur via a Values Audit. These are:
- Top leadership commitment to prioritization of the Values Audit initiative for its duration. This involves onboarding of, and agreement by heads of all business and operational units across the organization; and contractual commitment to engagement Stage completion independent of C-Suite changes in leadership.
- Unqualified empowerment of those charged with execution of the initiative, accompanied by written guarantees of zero risk of loss of position, status, benefits, entitlements, or career progression within the organization as a result of volunteering to join the Initiative team.
- Priority access to enterprise-wide resources, when and as necessary, in support of the initiative; with expedited procedures for handling resource requisitions enterprise-wide.
- Absence of any impositional time constraints, reporting requirements, oversight or management of the Initiative team.
- Being in Systems engagement commitment is for the duration of the then current Stage of Service Offering, as defined below in the Offering Stage descriptions.
Stage II: The Values Audit
On close of the Engagement Agreement, the Being in Systems 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 Being in Systems Team and HR then co-create the Initiative Brief, Invitation, and supporting documentation. HR and the Being in Systems Team will then enroll volunteers to form the Values Audit Team, which is drawn from across all operating divisions and departments, assuring full representation of all internal constituencies.
The Values Audit Team is then provided with an experiential introduction to Being in Systems 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 organization by:
- Collect all prior explicit expressions, by the organization, in all media and channels of communication, of its declared values;
- Research and collect 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 actions and contribution to the world, across all mediums and media channels;
- Solicit and gather the internal tacit, explicit, and experiential expression of the organization’s values, as seen through the perceptions and lived experiences of the people of the company, with the aspired goal of engaging every single person in the company willing to share.
- Develop the internal omni-directional communication affordance, integrated into the enterprise system, as a company-wide nervous system, to facilitate soliciting and gathering the internal experiential narrative and qualitative data from the people in the organization.
- Upon completion of the research above, the Value Audit Team is then charged with preparation of a Value Audit Report and Presentation; with the findings presented to the whole organization, from the Board of Directors out, to every person employed by the organization.
Stage III: The Values Agreement
Stage III 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, creation of a formal Values Agreement embodying the new collectively created Values Statement, and a mechanism for execution of the Value Agreement, by every employee in the Company, reflecting their consent and commitment to actively monitor and enforce alignment with 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 a living, evolving dimension of organizational purpose, identity, and action.
Stage IV: The Values Checklist
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, to enable:
- Creation and validation of new decisions, actions, programs, and initiatives alignment with adopted values; and a signaling mechanism, in the event of violation of those values, requiring revision or rejection, prior to implementation. This serves to integrate values, as a living dynamically applied filter, to all operational decision making and activities, and new initiatives.
- Identification of past and current decisions, policies, and actions determined to be out of alignment with the terms of the new Values Agreement; prioritization of actions or policies slated for remediation, replacement, or abandonment 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.