Values Are More Than Just A Blue Sky Activity

The time came for the four of us at The FIELD Collaborative to sit down and define what our organizational values would be. The setting, on the deck of a cottage on an island in in the Muskokas, was the perfect backdrop for this work.

The backdrop to our values discussion.

Personal values are those things which we deem worthwhile and are the basis for the individual choices we make. They are reflected in the way we live our lives. Having spent quite a fair amount of time with each other over the years, albeit not necessarily all together at the same time, Sandy, Aileen, Karen and I felt comfortable with one another and were convinced there were significant overlaps in everyone’s values.

Why then would it be important to set organizational values for The FIELD Collaborative? We knew that the values we were to agree on that day would inform and guide our future decisions. We knew we will have to make decisions around the projects we accept, how we present ourselves to clients and partners, and how to grow the organization itself. The values we were going to choose would become our plumb line, the standard we intend to return to periodically to measure ourselves against. The values will be used to diagnose areas of potential conflict and provide a screening tool when we begin hiring. Future employees and decision makers need to feel comfortable aligning themselves with these organizational values. After all, these values will become the plumb line for their work as well. In other words, values are important.

So, what did we decide that day? After long, boisterous and sometimes intense dialogue, we were able to narrow the field of values down to five. The FIELD Collaborative values are:

Fun

Integrity

Environment

Learning

Diversity.

These are the filters through which we will evaluate the decisions we make. Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a closer look at each of the five values.

This blog post introducing the topic of values was written by Wendy Milne, Vice President, Operations

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