Earlier in 2021, after joining my current company, I spent a lot of my time just getting to know the team and understanding how they were feeling and what was important to them, why they joined, etc. 

This work led to uncovering some "themes" that then led to our first draft of our company values. I scheduled a long brainstorm session with the team to introduce them to the themes I uncovered and asked them to dig in deep. 

Splitting up into groups, each group was assigned a theme, and were asked to consider if this theme would become an official company value. It was important that they thought about some specific examples of where they could see this value happening already, but also to take time to understand if there was something concerning with that proposed value. ie. if Human is one of our values, how could this potentially be used in a harmful way if taken to an extreme? 

We came out of that conversation with folks aligned on what our values were and how to explain them and express them to folks outside of the company. I'm really proud of that work! 

All things said, I also made sure the team understood that the values are going to change and they will absolutely not make sense forever. They should be constantly questioned and challenged in order to remain or to be changed to something that suits us better.