Summary

Once an organization has set strategic priorities for its strategic plan, one final step still remains: surfacing core values. According to Jim Collins in his book "Leader to Leader," core values cannot be created because people are already following a set of core values whether or not they have been articulated. Strategic planning is therefore about uncovering these values, and making sure that all stakeholders are aligned with them.

The Background

Let`s see how uncovering core values might work in practice. At the strategic planning retreat of Education Unlimited (a nonprofit that provides mentoring opportunities to low-income children), the board and staff decided to surface their core values by answering the following questions: (i) what underlying assumptions inform our work? (ii) what are our most important guiding beliefs and ideas? (iii) what attitudes permeate our every action?

The Solution

These questions enabled them to come up with their first of five core values: We create strong mentoring relationships through honest communication, accountability, and trust.

Lessons Learned

As this example illustrates, core values are an important way to attract people who are like-minded to the organization. It happens all too frequently that people are drawn to an organization either as staff, board members, or volunteers, and discover that the organization's way of doing business is inconsistent with their hopes and expectations. When an organization takes the trouble to articulate its core values, it sends the message that this is the way it wants to do business, and people who feel the same way can know what to expect.