Part 1: How we’re codifying our values and naming the behaviours we want to bring to The Catalyst and all of our work. Plus an invitation to help you do the same.
CAST is The Catalyst’s incubator. Together with the network we’ve created the Catalyst’s clear mission and framework for action. The framework will develop over time as we learn where best to place our focus.
However, we believe the ways in which we go about this work together are critical if The Catalyst is to realise its ambition. This means identifying the necessary behaviours for us to work effectively, and the tools, processes and practices that help us embody them.
“Our relentless focus is on the network. In a word, our success pivots on our ability to work together.” Annie Dare, CAST
At CAST we’re really clear that this work begins at home. And as a small but growing charity, it’s all the more important that we confirm and codify the behaviours that enable us to do our best work. So that’s what we’ve done.
How we codified our values
To begin this work we defined our process through informed desk research and the wise contributions from Catalyst partners (with special thanks to Anneke Victorica @ The Engine Room).
We consulted internally and externally to understand how CAST is perceived by others. We ran workshops to identify what the core CAST behaviours might be — then we created headline statements the behaviours could sit under. And we checked to make sure that the statements covered off our design, relational and institutional approaches to the work we do.
Finally, we circled back to check with partners and team members how these headline statements landed with them (particular thanks to Nissa Ramsay and Megan Griffith Gray for their time and brains on this). We wanted to be sure that the statements correspond with the specific types of behaviours we feel are fundamental for working together, and that they can act as a compass for us over the next year.
CAST’s four values
Through this process we’ve arrived at these four statements. They are a synthesis of specific, measurable behaviours:
- We’ll work in service, to the Catalyst mission, beyond CAST. We’ll seek and expect learning and challenge from all sources. We’ll be transparent and honest. We’ll share our thinking, our methods and our learning:
We’ll be wide open - We’ll show the courage to create, to stretch our thinking, to be wrong, to look beyond, to speak up, to take risks and to be uncomfortable as we deliver constant improvement. We’ll do this as we are (with a nod to Dot Everyone) impatient for radical change:
We’ll go all out - We’ll absolutely embrace our connectedness and value our differences. We’ll actively work to understand, support and care for the needs and experience of each one of us at every level. We’ll recognise each other as equals, working to shared goals and together, we hold power:
We’ll act as one team - Together, in our distinct roles, we’ll lead our mission with ambition. We’ll meet our challenges with confidence and a smile. We’ll hold each other in the highest esteem. We’re doing this!
We’ll be optimists
These short statements and their associated behaviours aren’t always going to be easy for us to uphold and embody. We’re all working within legacy power structures and are subject to political and economic undercurrents. We recognise the need to support each other in this process. We believe it is essential work in our mission to help transform the sector.
How we’re codifying Number 3 to drive our team behaviours
This means looking at the values we’ve identified and what needs to be in place for us to embody them most or all of the time.
At CAST, with help from Emma Field and Nat Hunter, we’ve been exploring №3: how we’ll act as one team. We’ve run an audit to understand the ways our team currently interact with each other: what’s amazing and what could work better. And we’ve run some experiments to see what tools and processes might support us. We’re using this as a prototype for us to learn from and apply across the other values and will be sharing our learning on that soon.
The statements aren’t perfect
Lastly, it’s important to acknowledge that these statements are not perfect. Maybe they’re too long, maybe they’re too vague, too specific or maybe too high falutin’. But we’re not looking for perfect here. We’re looking for ‘good enough’, to get us started and to act as a compass for CAST in the first year of The Catalyst. We’re putting something imperfect out into the world. We’ll iterate on that.
We’d love to support, share and learn together
Specifically, we’d like to work with Catalyst organisations on codifying and embodying your existing or emerging values. We’ll share more of how we did it and intend to establish a working group of peers to take this work forward. If you’re someone with the intention to identify or operationalise existing values within your organisation — get in touch.
