Part 2 Turning Your Robin Hood Ideals into Your Operational Strategy
Excellence starts from within. Intention and words will only take leaders, teams, and organization so far. Leaders and organizations need values to establish consistent meaningful action. While ethics tells us what not to do, values (or operating principles) give us and our whole organization direction, commitment, and decision-making prowess. It’s time to up the ante on “good” leadership.

Table of Contents
1. Overview
2. The What: Some Golden Opportunities for Values-Based Operations
3. The How: Key Actions to Make Your Values Functional
4. What’s Next
5. Resources to Fill Your Toolbox
Key Takeaways
Operationalizing your values means using them as tools not just ideas.
There are plenty of principles and systems for organizations to review and apply their values, but there are also some golden opportunities!
There are five primary actions that will turn your values into empowering forces and standard operating functions.
Overview
We have been exploring how individual and organizational values can function as operating principles. Specifically, we have come to understand values as the means of demonstrating active compassion in a way that compels meaningful action from a space of shared principles. Bringing those values to work is an equitable practice that positions organizations to not only be clear on who they are and what they stand for, but it also creates standards of operation and success that allow for aligned independent decision making across the organization.
You really should know about this! You can find Part 1 here.
Today we discuss how your operations can be rooted practically in your values by turning your values into your operational strategy. First, we will examine the golden opportunities presented in some everyday operations. Then we will look at actions that take values from mere principles to empowering forces and organizational functions.

The What: Some Golden Opportunities for Values-Based Operations
Any business, government, community organization, or workplace has several standard features: mission, policies, goals, and data. While not every entity focuses or even revisits these regularly, these present golden opportunities for leaders to design and inspire values-based operational functions that improve, create, and sustain organizational capacity and success.
1. Mission
This is your opportunity to formally state the aims and values of your organization. A refresh is permitted and it may be in order. Does your mission state your values and are those the current values of the organization and its staff and activities?
2. Human Resource Policies
These policies should be revisited. Not just a line by line, but what the policies are actually for. This is your rulebook for how you treat the humans that you work with and for, and the planet on which they all live. Do your policies describe what you and your staff wish for yourself and others? If not, hit go here.
3. Goals
These do not have to be big ideas that live on a whiteboard or in a forgotten business plan or closed-door leadership meeting. Instead, these should be clearly identified priorities for each division, department, team, program, or role. This does not have to mean a long list of to do’s. But it should and can mean, that everyone understands how they and their work are legitimate and necessary elements of the grand plan. Goal setting should infiltrate all operations and everyone should know not only what their work is but why it matters to the end result. Does each department, team, program, and staff member understand the big goal, their priorities, and their targets to make it happen?
4. Data
For those that have taken the data plunge, this is a wonderful place to infuse your values. This does not mean that you have to embark right away on a racial equity assessment or some costly evaluation you don’t know what to do with. (Those are good tools, but often do not need to be the first step.) The first step is identifying what values you hold and how those values translate into the questions you are asking of your data. Specifically, what do you need to know about your staff, clients, donors, stakeholders, audience, programs, that will help you serve or engage with them according to your values? What kinds of programs, funders, clients, stakeholders should you be serving or engaging with based on your values? Ask your data! It will tell you what you are doing and what you aren’t!
Consider these opportunities as menu options. Of course, there are plenty more operations, policies, and structures out there just ripe for adjustment. Looking for other potential menu items? Consider how your meetings, business plan, budget, communications, or decision-making frameworks, may benefit from a review and an application of collective values.

The How: Key Actions to Make Your Values Functional
There are several key actions that will move your values from mere principles into empowering forces and well accepted organizational functions. This is where goals turn into actions. Consider these as some of the key steps needed to keep your values from languishing into a puddle of unused words.
1. Taking an equitable approach
The objective here is to ensure your standard operational principles and systems give power and authority for your organization to consistently make decisions independently and aligned to your values. Once again, the answer lies in several familiar equitable approaches:
1) access (to the strategies and processes intended to guide operations),
2) inclusion (everyone contributes, adheres, and benefits),
3) balance of power (the benefits and liabilities are shared, and the expectations are standardized to respective roles),
4) transparency (expectations are clear and known), and
5) integrity (we do and say what is right and what we believe, so we can trust our values and each other).
Put each of your principles or systems (e.g., values, policies, tasks, activities, roles) to the test. How is it or how can it demonstrate, better support, or increase the equitable characteristics above? Consider what to add or subtract from your current approach that would ensure it allows for these collective equitable values.
2. Identifying and prioritizing your values
One of the most debilitating issues CBOs face is conflating goals and priorities. It makes it difficult to know what to work on and impossible to defeat that invasive sense of urgency that causes us to say yes to all the things all at once. The same is true for values. To make your values functional, it is important to be able to name which values are big picture, which are necessary across the board, and which are interchangeable. Yes! Some values will have to yield to others on occasion. That’s okay, so long as you know which should take precedence. This means identifying what values you will prioritize over everything else.
3. Values Reconciliation (or mediation of seemingly conflicting values)
This action goes hand in hand with prioritizing your values. In fact, it is often triggered by issues of prioritization. It is not always possible to act on all of your values in a single situation. Similarly, every situation will not allow for even application of your values. This could look like needing to make a choice between prioritizing the organization’s interest in efficiency with its interest in ensuring full and fair participation. While one value may be maintaining integrity to your commitments, the other value of inclusion of necessary stakeholders, may be just as worthwhile. For this reason, having a strategy for how to reconcile or mediate between seemingly conflicting values, could help both prioritize the collective values and accept the resulting outcome without guilt or fear that your values are broken or unreliable. These strategies do not have to be complex, and can even be standardized to some extent, especially if you already have a set of organizational priorities!
4. Understanding context
Context is so important when acting on your values. As the last action step showed, sometimes situations create complications to acting on your values. In these instances, decision-making through the lens of context can prove invaluable. There is a fabulous Harvard Business Review article on this subject titled, “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making”.[1] It describes how a situational assessment can help you make decisions based on what kinds of expertise, systems, and protocols you already have in place. This is easily applicable to making decisions based on your values based on your organizational footprint. Organizational values do not have to be usurped by new, complex, or chaotic situations. Instead, understanding what to bring to bear, values included, can help improve decision making, not just allow you to "get through it" "this time".
5. Using data for decision-making
In addition to asking the right questions of your data, it is important to apply your data in a way that reflects your values. This is not limited to integrity and honesty. This includes making sure you tell the hard stories demonstrating room for improvement. It also means committing to using data to inform the decisions you make, the priorities you set, and where your values may need to be more present. Finally, it looks like showing your impact – how have you done the work you say you do, who benefited, who was harmed, who was included, who was excluded, did it create change, and are the benefits ongoing. This is essentially using your values to measure your public benefit.
The objective of identifying some golden opportunities and key steps to operationalize your values was to help you see your values as tools, not just ideas. There are so many opportunities to lead with your values with whatever opportunity or situation is in front of you. So, take it for a test drive. Start acting on those values.
Endnotes
[1] Snowden, David J, and Mary E Boone. “A Leader's Framework for Decision Making.” Harvard Business Review, Nov. 2007, https://hbr.org/2007/11/a-leaders-framework-for-decision-making. Accessed 20 Apr. 2023.

What’s Next
Consider
What are some golden opportunities for values-based operations in your organization or system?
Which actions listed above may prove the most feasible or most game changing?
Test
Using your own values as a single factor test, try identifying and prioritizing your values. Let this practice guide your leadership at home and at work.
Stay Tuned
Watch this space for more on Values-Based Leadership and Operations, including Part 3 when we ask some juicy questions of new and emerging leadership to begin building values at the top.

Resources to Fill Your Toolbox
1. Harvard Business Review, A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making, available here.
This post is part of the “Values-Based Leadership” series. To catch up, click here.
If you are eager to explore values mapping or planning for your organization, please reach out. From decision-making frameworks to policy updates to goal setting or impact planning, I’ve seen it and done it. Let me know how I can help you achieve your values-oriented goals. If you would just like to chat or partner, I’m here for that too!
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