The Project Book

CHAPTER 5 DETERMINE YOUR VALUES

Maitland, a financial PR company in the UK, found three words, integrity, respect and innovation, crop up continually in the values of FTSE100 companies. I won’t argue that these are the wrong words (although I’m amazed that agile wasn’t in there!). It’s just that if people are told that these are their values, rather than being engaged in a process to uncover them, it’s very easy for them to disengage. One sure sign of this disengagement is seeing these values pinned up next to their desk as a reminder.

Values shouldn’t be pinned up on a wall; they should be lived, no matter what situation we’re in. They define our leadership style, our approach to problem solving and what we become known for.

So what do you stand for?

Quite often, this feels like too big a question to answer and we don’t really know where to start. So let me help you. List the things you don’t like or you think are wrong. These should be single words: confusing documents might be ‘complexity’; aversion to change could be ‘resistance’. Now, next to these words, write their opposite or antonym. For example, complexity = simplicity, resistance = resilience, and so on. Keep the antonyms.

Next, list the things that are important to you (for example, family, timeliness or involvement). Now compare the two lists and strike through the duplicates. Once you have done that, list the five most important things to you. These are your core values. If they don’t feel right — and you’ll know ...