Picture this:

One day, you wake up to discover that everything has changed for you: your organization, your community, and the world. You cannot go to your usual workplace. Your organization is not able to conduct business the way it did even the day or week before.

Depending on how your organization is impacted by these circumstances, you may continue to serve clients as you did before. Or you may be unable to deliver your important services to the world in the way that you had done for as long you can remember.

By now, it should be clear that the scenario described above was, unfortunately, not just a bad dream. It was the situation of our communities, nation, and the world beginning a little over a year ago, when the news of COVID-19 emerged. In a moment, millions of us were asked to decrease density of gathering, to shelter in place, and eventually wear masks and utilize other safety precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

In that moment, millions of us were cut off from our usual patterns of living and behavior. But we still had our values as a compass to guide us toward what to do next.

So, what are organizational values, exactly?

In terms of strategic planning, there’s a couple of things to keep in mind:

The word “values” has a lot of different meanings. In this case, we’re referring to core values which can be defined as “deeply ingrained principles that guide all of an organization’s actions; they serve as its cultural cornerstones.”

Core values can be compared with three other kinds of values:

Aspirational values refer to values that an organization “needs to succeed in the future, but currently lacks.”

Permission-to-play values are “the minimum standard, but they do not distinguish an organization.”

Accidental values “arise spontaneously without being cultivated by leadership and take hold over time.”

All of this suggests that core values are unique to a particular organization and lived in the day-to-day interactions of an organization among staff, clients, and donors. Values are relational – they represent our interactions with one another.

Now that we’ve defined core values, why do they matter so much?

Values always matter. And they came to matter even more in the significant changes of the past year. When we are unable to conduct business as usual, values help us to know who we are as an organization and how we want to move through change.

How to create organizational values:

Creating organizational values involves thinking about some of the big categories that guide your work.

It is usually helpful to look at values of similar organizations and reflect on what makes you distinctive.

When you create values, you want to include the larger “headline words” and also explain how those larger ideas are lived in your organization. For example, San Francisco-based Asian Women’s Shelter lists their values as Survivor Centeredness, Non-Hierarchy, and Anti-Oppression. Each value is followed by a short paragraph that explains how the value is put into action.

The Ross Collective's values are here; they have been a compass to focus our offerings, clarify our leadership and continue to support leaders to do outstanding work in these challenging times.

What about your longstanding organizational values?

Obviously, each organization has its values, but they’re worth revisiting from time to time. The conversation could start with: Are these still the right values for our organization? Are we still aligned with these values? Are there other values that have emerged?

As we try to wake from the current bad dream of this pandemic, it’s far more critical now to revisit our organizational values to ensure that are still aligned with them. Many of our organizations have changed over the course of the last year, shifting to fit the needs of the circumstances. For some of us, we’re better equipped to weather this storm while others are at risk of capsizing. No matter which end of the spectrum you find yourself, it’s important to assess the changes to your organizational values and reset them if necessary.

This is part 2 of a 5-part series on Strategic Planning:

Part 1 How much can we plan in moments of uncertainty?

Part 3 How vision lights the way to a better future

Part 4 How one organization went from identity crisis to focus

Part 5: How to take the important last step of strategic planning