Duration: 120 minutes
Focus of Session: Every organization or enterprise should operate around a set of common values. Individuals bring a value set with them when they join an organization, but not everyone has the same set of values. This session will provide a forum for discovering your organization's set of common values and chart a way forward for communicating and employing those values as business practices.
Method: Socratic method using open discussion and breakout groups.
Objectives: Participants will be able to:
Use this time to set the tone for this session by asking questions and prompting student activity. While this session will contain a lot of information, much of it new to participants, it is important that they discover this information for themselves. Your goal as facilitator is to prepare them to take on the task of identifying their set of common values, stating them clearly and memorably, and putting practices in place that reinforce their value set.
Welcome everyone to your session. Ask them, “What business are we in?” Write down the answers on the board. Provide this quote from Theodore Levitt either in PowerPoint, a handout, or written on the board: “People don’t want a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.” Engage the class in discussion about what that means to a person trying to sell drills. Emphasize the need to focus on the customer’s end result, rather than the features of the product. Follow up with the question, “What are the end-result benefits that our users/customers/stakeholders (use the term that best fits your end-product clients) are looking for from us?” Write these responses on the board. Spend sufficient time on this part to probe deeply into what the end result benefits are that clients are really looking for.
Close this exercise by asking, “Why do they come to us for this benefit?” After collecting responses, ask, “What prevents them from going somewhere else for this?” You may use these follow-up questions to probe this topic more deeply: