Case Study: Values Reset

July 12, 2016
Posted by: Curve Group
Category: Case Studies

Against the backdrop of a highly competitive superannuation industry characterised by ongoing consolidation and cost pressure, this superannuation fund was focused on becoming ‘future ready’ and being prepared for significant change.

The Need

With operating conditions expected to become more challenging and potentially constrain the organisation’s future goals, this superannuation fund had commenced a number of change-readying activities including a review of its operating model and technology platforms. To support and reinforce these activities, the organisation sought a visible and impactful people intervention to kick start necessary conversations regarding its aspired culture. Specifically, this organisation sought to engage employees in resetting expectations around the organisation’s values and to involve senior leaders in identifying the leadership behaviours that would either reinforce or undermine these.

What We Did

Curve Group designed and facilitated a series of interactive employee workshops to explore the role of values in organisational behaviour and decision-making and whether the current values were suitably future-focused. Through a hands on ‘card sort’ activity participants collaboratively arrived at a set of values for the organisation to ‘let go’ versus values that must be ‘preserved and protected’ and those that must be ‘developed new’ to support future success. Participants then took part in a ‘tagline competition’ to generate descriptions of the values in language that resonated and was meaningful to them.

Consolidated output from these workshops was validated at a subsequent senior manager offsite that Curve Group also designed and facilitated. In this session senior managers worked together to explore what the validated set of ‘future proofed’ values meant in relation to ‘on track’ and ‘off track’ leadership behaviours. The collation and documentation of these behavioural guideposts was an important precursor to further leadership development work to support bringing the values to life through senior role models.

The Outcome

The Executive team has declared the Values Reset to be a resounding success given the level of values-driven conversations generated and energy for the future created. Importantly, due to the extensive engagement of employees in the process, there has been strong ownership and buy-in relation to the values. This organisation is now looking to further embed the values through Team Values Kits containing a series of interactive team-based discussions and activities (e.g. Values Bingo, Values Show & Tell and Values Olympics) as well as Development Workshops linked to the values for the entire organisation, targeting specific capability areas and skills in order to truly bring these to life.