Business schools and especially MBA courses preach that every company must have its Charter of Values, its Mission and its Vision! These are usually built by the company's top management, its owners, or its top management! Soon after, they are placed in beautiful paintings to decorate their walls.
With us it was no different!
In 1993, the Mission, the Vision and our 1st Letter of Values were created by the partners, during the period that I was studying the MBA at FGV and remained with us for 20 years!
When hiring each employee, we passed the values on to everyone, but without any great meaning, as a guideline, something to be fulfilled, but that in everyday life they didn't even remember! I only discovered this in 2013 and here's the tip: - Do you and your team talk about values or just about “things to do”?
With the change we went through through the learnings of Metanoia, something new was needed: the search for commitment and engagement of the team! The 1st step for this change to really happen was the re-construction of our Values Charter, but with a huge difference: the participation of 100% of our Team! Can you imagine that? But how to do something that sought the essence of each, making their values live on a daily basis, at work?
Each one was invited to bring 3 personal values that they believed would represent them and mainly contribute to the business! And among many meetings with a team of almost 50 people, 3 values each, through conversation groups and a consensus process, we reached 6 values that represented everyone! It was a great challenge, but a great victory! Some of the values were actually pleas from the team, so that some bad behaviors didn't come back to exist and others came as challenges, because they were values that would take us further, to another level!
It was a really big change! Living the values in our day to day changed the team's conscience, brought meaning to their work and a rich change in behavior, of course for the better! This happened in 2013!
But as I said, some of the values like honesty and fairness were just pleas from the team, so shortly thereafter, we no longer felt like we were being challenged.
We made a beautiful change movement again, but this one with much more beauty and an even superior result, as the team was already at another level of engagement and awareness stage.
It was a whole day of joint construction with all employees! We went to the University of the Painter of Futura Paints for inspiration, a more advanced work on this Crossing with beautiful values and the magical purpose of “Coloring Lives”!
We left there with a new Values Charter, with deep meanings that were built by everyone and that would challenge us for many years to come!
And with a great New Economy Manifesto!
A Memorable Experience that moved our Team! Really, the power of a Charter of Values only exists if it is created by a Co-Creation team, by the Meaning it represents for everyone and so that each one can exert their influence so that our Hologram can feel that we live what we say and what we think!
See below the movie of the restructuring of the letter of values that took place in 2015: