Our Value(able) Journey, Part One

Values as the Q’s actionable compass

Responsibility, integrity, proactivity. Values. Such a powerful yet worn-out word, frequently used by many organizations as a facade only. How come that values constitute practically the core of organizational identity, but we often witness employees behaving completely the opposite? The answer to this question, as well as what the process of describing and embracing organizational values should look like, you are going to find in this blog.

Organizational identity and culture as fertile soil for development

As an expert extensively engaged in discovering the potentials of individuals and finding appropriate companies for those individuals’ development, I came to the conclusion that as there is no plant for every soil, there likewise is no individual for every organization. What I often realize is that a misfit in values is the most frequent reason for a general lack of fit between an employee and an organizational culture.

This is precisely why understanding and establishing the organizational identity, culture, and values is the key to ensuring that people can recognize a company as an environment in which they can thrive. Values are one of the key pillars of organizational culture. Q Management Team recognized it and initiated the process of describing and systematically adopting them.

Values as the cornerstone

Values are a company’s cornerstone, deep principles that direct decisions and actions in a company and do not change regardless of time, circumstances, or organizational objectives.

They are a steering-wheel of decision-making and, if fully embraced and lived, can be perceived at all levels of a company’s functioning – in employee behavior, in relationships within teams, in establishing and driving processes, in goal setting, in strategy crafting, in relationships with clients, in leadership, and, eventually, even in how space is arranged.

Values represent a compass in decision-making and they need to be visible in everyone and in everything. They reflect the soul of a company and, to be authentic, they need to reflect the values of its founders because those values are the ones that brought a company to the current point in time.

This is why my primary task was to familiarize myself with the professional values and principles of the founders and the values of the entire management. So we started by recognizing their personal values as a key shaper and driver of the company’s development.

After recognizing and bringing to the surface their personal values, we needed to harmonize around those values that were initially in discordance. The key to organizational values is that they must be common and this is why we were searching for this core through a workshop, for those essential shapers of a Q story so that they permeate every single Qumans’ action.

We unraveled these values by considering Q from dierent angles and asking ourselves the following questions:

• What is attracting me to an organization like Q?


• What is it that makes the Q culture unique?


• What does Q do better or simply dierent from others?


• What would Q want to be better at than anyone else?


• How would you describe 5 key characteristics/attributes/features of Q?


• Our postulates and guides of our actions…


• The Q Person – what behaviors we appreciate


• The Q Enemy – what behaviors we dislike

The next step in our value(able) journey is to reveal our core Q values! Just follow this path…