How we’re defining our core values (and why you should too)

Walking into Macmillan’s offices on my first day as an Innovation Consultant back in June, a hundred and one questions were running through my mind: am I going to enjoy this new role? Are the projects going to be interesting? What’s the work culture like? Are my co-workers going to like me? Will we work well together? Will they share the same values as me?

I quickly found out that the Innovation team had been through a lot of change before I joined and was in the process of reflecting and re-iterating what the team does and can offer Macmillan.

Within the first few weeks of starting, we were reviewing, refocusing and refreshing:

• Our vision, what are we striving to do?
• Our values, what do we believe in?
• Our approach, how are we going to get to where we want the team and Macmillan as an organisation to be?

It was an exciting time to join and I hit the ground running, leading the rest of the team in the drafting of our design values, a set of values that would help the Innovation Team to stay true to itself in the constantly shifting landscape of cancer, Macmillan and innovation.

Currently, we have a set of draft values that we are gathering some feedback on. We’ll be sharing our final values in the next couple of weeks in another post so keep an eye out for those!

But wait, why did we think we needed design values? And why should you also think about your own team values?

Having a set of values isn’t new and most large organisation have them and make them publicly visible. But for the Innovation Team, it wasn’t just about writing up a nice sounding list of things we believe in to never look at again. We wanted and needed a set of practical values that would help us refocus the team and ultimately steer our day to day work and support us in our decision making.

Looking at other organisation’s inspiring values and articles on the topic, we could see that values can be a useful guide or in some instances a checklist to make sure that an organisation is developing and designing services in the ‘right way’.

If you’re thinking of getting your team together to write up a suite of design values, take some time to consider:

• What do you as individuals believe in? (for example, mine was putting people living with cancer at the heart of everything we do)
• What is important to you personally when it comes to the work you are doing? (this might be prototyping often or testing ideas with users)
• What do you feel you should strive to do? (for example, to be more inclusive of excluded groups)
• What do you wish your team or organisation did better or did more? (for the Innovation Team, it was sharing our work more often)
• Why do you feel you need values? When will you be using them and why? Who is your audience and why do they need to be aware of your values?

We started off by asking ourselves some similar questions as well as taking the time to do some desk research to find out how other inspiring design studios and charities such as Snook and The Samaritans and many others were framing and sharing what they stood for.

One of Snook’s values

The next step was having our first ‘values brainstorming’ session where we brought together all our findings and value ideas on a board.

If you’re thinking of having a similar ‘values brainstorm’, some tips would be:

• Make sure people come prepared with values already written out on post its
• Keep this session open, it’s not about removing or dismissing values, but listening and welcoming all of them
• Write up and have visible the definitions of a ‘value’ and a ‘behaviour’, it’s important at this stage to be aware of the difference. For us, a value is something we believe in, which whereas a behaviour is an action that we might do to put that value in motion. For example, our value is being person-centred, while our behaviour is engaging with people throughout a project

Culainn, Nicola and I after our Values Brainstorming session

At the end of our brainstorming session we had a number of behaviours under 7 main values:

1. We believe in being open and transparent
2. We believe in being inclusive
3. We believe in doing not talking
4. We believe in putting people first
5. We believe in always asking why
6. We believe in the power and impact of collaboration
7. We believe in the Double Diamond as a process for innovation

The next stage of refining our values was far more chaotic. We debated about the differences between being human-centred, person-centred and user-centred as a value. We found that the 7 values weren’t right yet and reworked and reworded them, replacing ‘we believe in doing not talking’, which was too vague, to ‘we believe in making and iterating’.

If you’re working through your different values, don’t be put off by this stage being a bit more confusing and unclear. It’s important at this stage to:

• Play around with different ways of wording your values
• Consider to question your values, do you really mean what you’re saying?
• Move away from vague and overly broad statements, or on the flip side too specific and closed values
• Limit the number of values you have, you want your suite to be concise, clear and to the point, no one is going to want to read a list of 20 values

After these refining sessions, we were left with 5 values:

1. We put people living with cancer and their needs first
2. We work with others to design impactful services
3. We are makers, iterators and sharers
4. We are problem explorers
5. We are open, transparent and inclusive

Sketch and sketch again, drawing iterations for our value ‘we are makers, iterators and sharers’

Our next step was to bring these to life through illustrations. We each took some time to draw out what our value meant and how we might represent it through icons or drawings. We tried a couple ideas out within the Innovation team before finalising our illustrations.

If you’re at this illustrative stage, don’t just get the best drawer in your team to make the illustrations in isolation. Continue to engage and involve people throughout your team to encourage shared ownership of your values.

In line with our last value, ‘we are open, transparent and inclusive’, we put out our shiny new values for some much needed external constructive criticism. We wanted to gauge if our values made sense, were clear and helped other people in the organisation understand what the Innovation Team does.

A screenshot of our Typeform in the making which we then used to gather anonymous feedback

I created a Typeform which was sent out to some colleagues and printed out our values and pinned them on a board in the kitchen and next to the lifts to capture people’s thoughts while they waited.

We learnt so much at this stage about how our values were landing and so I would recommend getting feedback on your values before you finalise them.

We found out that:

• It was unclear how our values fit with Macmillan’s organisational values and behaviours
• People wondered why we felt like we needed our own and wanted to know our reasoning for creating them
• The purpose of our values wasn’t clear, specifically in how they would help Macmillan in reaching its strategic goals
• Our values were not grounded enough and people were looking for clear examples on what our values meant for our day to day work

“[the values are] really accessible — I feel like I get what you’re about”

“[Values] 3, 4 and 5 are really good, illustrative of your work and make me want to work with you”

Overall the Typeform was the most effective way in gathering feedback with a 100% completion rate. The board in the kitchen and next to the lifts only gathered feedback from one lone soul. However, we felt using both methods, digital and physical, meant our values were seen by a range of people.

If you’re interested in gathering feedback on your values, make you sure:

1. Let people give feedback in their own time and anonymously
2. Provide the right amount of context to your values and what you are using them for
3. Consider a range of methods on gathering feedback (from physically printed copies to digital surveys, I’ve seen examples of people pinning documents on the back of a loo door)
4. Take the feedback you receive on board!

Gathering feedback using a large poster board left in the kitchen and next to the lifts

We’ve absorbed these thoughts and amended our values to refine and improve them.

Another piece of feedback we gathered was:

“The values are great at conveying the concepts of your work and your approach. I guess what’s missing for me is how these become incorporated into your work, so almost the process and what these steps are in practice.”

From feedback such as the quote above, we observed that people wanted more detail and have started to create a parallel document to sit alongside each value which will pin point what our values mean in practice and what we aspire to do.

A key learning here and something to consider when you shape your values is that they are not isolated documents that sit on a mantel piece. Values are living documents, that are complimentary to project plans, team visions, working methodologies and a range of other documents and tools which make up how you and your team work and deliver projects.

Having a set of values should be more than just words on a page. We have confidence that our values will unite us as a team and bring us together through a shared understanding of what we believe in.

We’re excited to be sharing our values more widely soon and to hear how your team has approached creating values, so tell us your stories of writing up design values and some of the challenges or benefits you have found through your experience.