BACKGROUND
World Values Day is an annual campaign organised by The UK Values Alliance. It acts as an opportunity for individuals and organisations to think about their most deeply held values and to act on them. In its second year, the 2017 World Values Day focused on the values of groups and organisations. Many events and activities were held around the world in the lead up to, and on the day itself. In London, the culmination was an evening workshop bringing together over 70 values practitioners to discover some of the best ways to close the values gap, between the values we aspire to in our organisations and what happens in practice. Further information on the event can be found on the Employee Engagement Alliance website.
CHALLENGE
The goal of the evening was to generate practical and implementable solutions to the values gap challenge and to capture, make sense of and prioritise all the best ideas from the 70 people attending. Like many of our clients, The UK Values Alliance wanted to engage their audience in a meaningful, inclusive and impactful way and generate tangible results that could be employed by delegates within their organisations over time.
APPROACH
To deliver on this complex brief effectively, the agenda and content needed careful preparation and management, and few people have our expertise in this area. We worked closely with Event Host Liz Murphy in the planning stages to understand her objectives and recommended how our Collaborate App – the perfect tool for harnessing the insights in large groups – could channel all the experience in the room in a limited time period.
In a highly interactive two hour workshop we were able to generate over 200 insights, agree five priority challenges and 50 solution ideas to get real clarity on what prevents organisations from living their stated values in day-to-day life.
We identified the five priority challenges as a lack of authentic dialogue about values and behaviour in organisations, consistent behaviour of senior leaders, understanding of the meaning behind the values, fear of giving feedback and business and moral dilemmas. The 50 solution ideas crowdsourced during the event provided workable responses to these, which can be put in to practice by delegates following the event.
Delegates also heard from three speakers during the evening, all three providing insights into the strategies they have employed in their organisations, to close their own values gaps. Following the presentations delegates formed into small groups to reflect on the advice they had heard and identify and discuss the main challenges to closing the gaps. This process reinforced what the delegates had learnt during the evening, gave them the opportunity to discuss with their peers and enter their thoughts into the Collaborate App, via Crystal’s iPads, which were handed out at the beginning of the session.
The Collaborate technology enabled The UK Values Alliance to crowdsource the best ideas generated for practical steps to take on closing the gap and share them instantly with the group. A comprehensive report detailing all the discussion topics was ready for emailing to delegates the following day.
