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The Value of Values
I’ve found values to be an accessible bottoms-up path into the fuzzy world of coaching, leadership, and self-exploration. They are concrete and give people a foundational guidepost into a world of intentionality. As with the best guideposts, there are also analogies and metaphors from the world of technology. Values serve people similar to how design principles (when actively used) serve the product development process.
Values are Design Principles for Your Life
Design principles start from a place of dreaming. We are creating a new thing, whether it’s a company, a product, service, or community. Part of dreaming up the North Star is identifying what we value and how we want life to be different for ourselves and our relationships. The principles can be used generatively to birth new ideas or features; and they can also be used as validation criteria to see if a new feature or design is “on-brand” or fits the product/org. Ben Brignell maintains an awesome open-source resource that dives deeper into design principles and has examples from all over the world. Two examples that I particularly value because I feel are both thoughtful, unique, and actively lived throughout the product / company are Airbnb’s and Greenpeace’s. One failing of design principles is when they are created in an optimistic time of beginnings but once created are ignored and never referred to again, a sad instance of “set and forget.” Out of curiosity, I looked up Facebook’s design principles and these are the cautionary tale of something out-dated (“Transparent” 🤭) that’s long been set and forgotten. In fairness, many individual groups, teams and products at Facebook have since established their own individual design principles and those are actively used.
Similar to design principles, creating a draft set of core values, and additional experimental values helps keep you on-track and creates guideposts for your work and life.
Finding Your Values
Getting to a draft set of values can happen with a 30–60-minute block of time.
1. Divergence. Sit with a blank piece of paper and come up with as many words or phrases for things that matter to you. Think about leaders you admire, books/music/movies that you’ve loved and what you identify about the characters…
