Step one: identify, with your community, your organisation’s values.

Step one involves consulting everyone on the organisation’s values. It is your best opportunity to include everyone and lead by empowering. During step one you will be sending powerful messages about your good intentions and invoking the power of the community in your quest to achieve your mission.

The organisational mission statement that emerges from consultation will underpin the other steps of the process.

A FIVE MINUTE JOB FOR THE PUBLIC RELATIONS DEPARTMENT?

Your public relations department could write a mission statement in five minutes. This would cost you nothing. Their statement could well be indistinguishable from the result of consultation. So why consult?

You should consult because the benefits of consultation arise from the process of consultation, not its product. These benefits (listed on page 10) are highly desirable. They are worth repeating.

A successful consultation can ensure that everyone is:

• striving for the same goals
• working in accordance with the same principles
• adhering to the same standards
• fostering organisational morale
• securing the organisation’s reputation
• determining the character of the organisation.

Asking your PR department to write the mission statement is a false economy.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

What’s the point of a mission statement? They all say the same thing.

When people discuss what really matters they largely agree. They certainly agree on the essentials. If this wasn’t the case cooperation would be impossible. In consultation such agreement, and its importance to the smooth running of the organisation, becomes visible.

But surely it’s all ‘motherhood and apple pie’?

Some people believe that only disagreement is interesting. These people dismiss values as ‘obvious’. But something’s being obvious doesn’t make it unimportant. Our values, however ‘obvious’, make serious demands on us. If they didn’t it would be easy to live up to them. Productive disagreement is anyway parasitic on agreement. If we didn’t agree on what we’re talking about, its value and on what counts as evidence for truth, there’d be no point in disagreeing.

Surely it is not identifying values that is important but living them?

This is the rationale behind the six-step process. But we cannot reasonably be expected to live our values unless we know what these values are and what it is to live them.

SECURING RESOURCES

To consult successfully you need resources. You might have all the time, money, space, equipment, energy and expertise you need. Or you might not.

If such is your situation you might:

• identify your resources, then tailor your consultation to fit, or
• plan your consultation, then find the resources to match.

In the first case you’ll know where you are. In the second you could achieve your ideal. This is a clash of values: security against excellence. Both are important. Only you can choose which, in your situation, is more important.

ENSURING STRONG LEADERSHIP

You might:

• be emotionally intelligent; an excellent listener and communicator

• have a vision that enthuses others and secures their commitment
• have authority, both natural and derived from your position
• have the time, energy and enthusiasm to lead this project
• be a superb administrator, researcher and organiser.

If so you are the right person to lead your consultation. If not you need to identify someone who has these qualities. More plausibly, you need a team with these qualities.

None of these qualities is negotiable: strong leadership (and efficient administration) is a sine qua non.

PREPARING FOR CONSULTATION

Successful consultation requires serious preparation. You need to be clear about:

• who you will consult
• your short- and long-term aims
• how you will consult
• when (and where) you will consult.

DECIDING YOUR SCOPE

Each organisational ‘constituency’ sees your organisation from a different perspective. In consulting everyone you will see your organisation from a 360° perspective. Only this will give you a full picture.

‘Everyone’ includes your:

• immediate community
• extended community.

Identifying your immediate community

The ‘immediate community’ of a school includes:

• pupils
• teachers
• support staff
• management
• the headteacher
• governors.

In a business it includes:

• employees
• some consultants
• management
• executive and non-executive directors.

These boundaries are not rigid: schools might include parents, businesses regular customers.

Who would you include in your immediate community?

These are the people whose behaviour and states of mind determine organisational morale and reputation.

Identifying your extended community

A school’s extended community includes:

• parents
• neighbours
• business partners
• local employers
• other schools
• voluntary agencies
• local faith groups
• the media
• local government
• emergency services.

These people are your ‘critical friends’. ‘Friends’ in having your interests at heart. ‘Critical’ because your getting it right matters to them.

Who would you include in your extended community?

It is from these lists that you will decide who to consult at step one.

Including everyone

It is easy inadvertently to omit certain groups. It is often the most obvious groups who get left out. Schools, for example, have omitted pupils, businesses their secretarial staff. Such omissions can contradict the messages you are trying to give in consultation. You will want to check your list for such omissions.

Sometimes you might want to exclude a group. Part of the community, for example, might be hostile to your organisation. Only you can decide whether consultation would alleviate or exacerbate the situation.

Building a data-base

A data-base on which you record all names and contact details will be invaluable. You will use it in sending out invitations, questionnaires, reminders and feedback. As you proceed through your consultation important details can be added.

The Data Protection Act

No personal information about a living individual (including their address) should be traceable back to that individual. You will want to make sure that personal details are not included on returned questionnaires or that individual responses are not made publicly available.

IDENTIFYING YOUR AIMS

A successful consultation has a clear focus. Your aim is, of course, to identify the organisation’s values. But this statement of aim hides a great deal of complexity.

The best way to clarify your focus is to identify your criteria of success. This involves formulating a clear statement of what you will count as evidence for the success of your consultation.

You might like to try completing, as concisely as possible, the statement:

My consultation will have been successful if by the end of it...

You will be clear about the aims of your consultation when you know exactly:

• What you want to learn from those you consult.
• What impact you want to have in consulting these people.

In considering your success criteria you will want to consider the following points:

Identifying ideals

Our values make demands on us. It is often difficult to live up to these demands. Value-conflicts, furthermore, ensure that it is impossible to live up to all of our values all the time. And in wanting to guard our self-respect and our reputations we often pay lip-service to values that don’t actually guide our choices.

This means that if you ask simply: ‘what are our values?’ your question will be ambiguous. The two interpretations are:

• Which values should the organisation live up to?
• Which values does the organisation live up to?

Half your people will answer one question, the other half the other question. Clarity requires you to decide which question you are asking.

Laying the groundwork

You might decide to ask both. In asking the former you will be identifying your goals. In asking the latter you will be identifying your starting point. Your eventual aim is to move from your starting point to the achievement of your goals. At some point, therefore, you will have to identify both. Only then can you identify the gap (if any).

In asking both questions you will be paving the way for step two, your review of current practice.

And it is not only step two for which, during consultation, you can lay the groundwork. You can also solicit ideas about:

• concrete examples of good and bad practice (steps two, three and four)
• improving organisational performance (steps three and four)
• barriers to improving performance (steps three and four)
• possible solutions to these barriers (steps three and four)
• what might count as evidence for success (step five)
• ways of monitoring improvements (step five)
• suitable ways to recognise and reward people (step six)
• beliefs about when recognition and reward are appropriate (step six).

Your consultation is a golden opportunity to harness the creativity of your people. But you will need to balance your desire to gather information against the loss of focus that could result from a multiplicity of questions.

You do not want to alienate your consultees by overworking them, confusing them or suggesting, by your behaviour, that you do not care about them but only about the information you can glean from them.

The impact of consultation

In identifying your aims it is important to consider the impact you want to have on consultees. Taking this into account does not make your consultation into a publicity stunt: it illustrates the importance you attach to your people, their well-being and their true opinions.

If in consulting you do not convince people that you are sincere in your desire to hear their true opinions, you will not collect the information you need. Acting on the misinformation you’re likely to gather will not enhance organisational success.

The way you consult indicates the values that underlie your consultation. If you get it right even the most cynical might start to think they have it wrong. This will have a significant impact on people’s responses to the initiatives that arise from consultation.

It is only sensible, in deciding your aims and identifying your success criteria, to give thought to the impact you want to have.

Once you have a crisp statement of your aims in consulting everyone, and of what will count as evidence of success, you are ready to plan your consultation.

GETTING YOUR TIMING RIGHT

It is essential, in consulting people, to:

• give people time to respond
• give yourself enough time to analyse responses
• avoid any busy periods
• make sure each stage of consultation follows in a coherent way.

The way to ensure you get the timing right is to construct a ‘timeline’. This is a time-table showing all the different elements of consultation, their start-times, duration and expected end-times. Timelines are discussed in more detail in Chapter 4.

You might decide your timeline by working backwards from a good time to launch your new mission statement (an annual general meeting? the anniversary of the founding of the organisation?). Before you can decide your timelines, however, you will need to plan your consultation.

PLANNING YOUR CONSULTATION

There are six stages to writing a mission statement on the basis of a consultation:

• 1.preliminary research
• 2.the consultation proper
• 3.drafting the mission statement
• 4.a final check
• 5.finalising the mission statement
• 6.providing feedback to all consultees.

Let’s look briefly at each.

Stage one: preliminary research

Your preliminary research will help you to:

• tailor your consultation to its audience(s) by enabling you to identify key
  • themes
  • interpretations
  • sensitivities
• test the way people interact
• identify likely disagreements
• ensure clarity of focus
• choose the best methodology for each stage
• check your timeline.

Your preliminary research will help you anticipate possible problems and decide appropriate solutions.

In the absence of such preparation fairly minor things (such as a difference in interpretation or disagreements about your aim) can take up an inordinate amount of time. Readiness with a response can save time and instil confidence.

If yours is a small, close knit community, your preliminary research might consist of a chat with key people. If your community is larger, more widespread and/or complex, or if you are new to it, your preliminary research might include formal interviews, focus groups, workshops and/or questionnaires.

During your preliminary research your subjects should:

• set the agenda
• define key terms
• talk at length
• offer opinions
• introduce sensitivities
• make suggestions.

Your job will be to:

• encourage subjects to talk freely
• listen carefully
• give positive feedback.

You might consider telephone interviews and/or video conferencing. Face to face contact, however, is more likely to elicit frank opinions, especially if your subjects have not met you (or each other) before.

The company newsletter, personnel files, the local paper or radio station will help you to identify suitable subjects for your preliminary research and start the conversation on the right foot.

You will want to involve people from across the communities you intend to consult. Don’t forget to include the important sub-groups of each target group (eg pupils of different ages, salespeople as well as secretaries ... ).

In the light of information gathered during your preliminary research you might need to refine your criteria of a successful consultation.

Stage two: the consultation proper

You can consult people by:

• interview
• focus group
• workshop
• a consultative event
• telephone (one to one or conference calls)
• post
• email.

You might consult the members of your immediate community in one way (by interviews, focus groups and/or workshops?) and the members of your extended community in another way (by holding a meeting or sending questionnaires?).

In deciding your approach you will want to consider:

• practical matters (space, time, administrative support...)
• diplomatic matters (hostilities, sensitivities, pecking orders ... )
• preferences (as identified during preliminary research)
• confidence and comfort (time to think, belief in procedures ... )
• confidentiality (Chatham House Rules, The Data Protection Act).

One of the most effective ways of consulting people on organisational values is by getting them together and stimulating a discussion about values.

Such events can be large meetings of the whole community, or workshops with participants chosen to represent horizontal or vertical ‘slices’ of the organisation.

Such events can be held according to ‘Chatham House Rules’. This means that although ideas discussed at the meeting can be taken outside the meeting, they cannot be attributed to any particular individual.

You will find plenty of ideas for holding consultative events on pages 71–73.

Stage three: the drafting of the mission statement

The outcome of the consultation proper will be a lot of:

• information about the organisation, its values and its living of these values
• goodwill and energy.

Your task is now to build on the latter by using the former to draft your new mission statement and provide feedback to participants. To draft your new mission statement you need to analyse all your information. This involves:

• identifying key themes and ideas
• identifying different formulations of the same themes and ideas
• noting favoured words and phrases
• mapping relationships between themes and ideas
• identifying the consensus on overall organisational purpose
• identifying beliefs about means by which to achieve this purpose.

Having done this you will need to try to capture these beliefs about means and ends as concisely as possible in a vocabulary that will resonate with consultees.

Your draft should have the following qualities:

• 1.It is clear, concise and will be understood by all.
• 2.It is flexible enough not to need re-writing in two years’ time.
• 3.It accurately captures the raison d’etre of your organisation.
• 4.It outlines your intrinsic and your instrumental values.

You might also find it useful to include definitions of key words.

Stage four: conducting a final check

In conducting a final check you can make sure that your draft mission statement:

• uses the language that consultees accept and understand
• accurately expresses the vision that emerged in consultation
• expresses the ideals expressed by consultees
• includes specific ideas constantly expressed by consultees
• does not reflect personal bias.

Your final check might consist of:

• further interviews and/or focus groups
• a postal survey.

You might choose to check the draft with all consultees, or simply with a representative group. This final check will give you (and others) the confidence of knowing that your final mission statement will encapsulate the vision expressed in consultation.

You might decide at this point to check your draft with an organisation such as the Plain English Society. They will help you to avoid formulations that sound pretentious and/or ambiguities that might mislead.

It should be made clear to those consulted at this point that this is not a re-run of the consultation proper, but simply a means of checking that the spirit of the consultation has been captured. Do not be tempted to re-write completely unless you are convinced by participants that you really have got it wrong.

Stage five: finalising the mission statement

Once you have made your final check you are ready to finalise your draft. At this point you should simply be dotting ‘i’s’ and crossing ‘t’s’. If you do need to re-write then return to stage three, get out all the documentation from the consultation and start again. It might be better should this be necessary to hand on the job to someone who can start afresh. It is important that this person was at the consultation. Only then are they likely to be able to capture the spirit of that consultation.

Once you have refined your draft you are ready to launch your mission statement and embark on the next steps of the process.

Stage six: providing feedback

It is important at some point to provide feedback to everyone who was involved at any stage of your consultation. This is the ideal point at which to provide that feedback because you can share with them the fruits of their labour: the final mission statement.

You might also like to explain to them the steps you intend to take to achieve this mission. This will involve outlining the next five steps of the process. These steps are discussed in Chapters 4 to 8.

Before we turn to them, however, let us look at some practical tips for conducting:

• interviews
• focus groups
• consultative events
• questionnaires.

Conducting interviews

The successful interviewer:

• explains what the interview is for and why their subject was chosen
• offers a choice of days and times
• arranges a room that:
  • affords privacy
  • is comfortable
  • is sensitively arranged (eg no intruding desk)
• provides refreshments
• starts by saying:
  • they appreciate their subject’s coming
  • why their subject was chosen (again)
  • what the purpose of the interview is (again)
  • confidentiality will be respected
• secures permission to record (note-taking interferes with listening)
• actively listens, provides positive feedback, probes for further information
• concludes by:
  • thanking their subject
  • telling them what will happen next
• transcribes their recording as soon as possible.

Conducting focus groups

The ideal focus group:

• has 8–12 members (so everyone contributes and no-one dominates)
• is constituted of:
  • different representatives from one group, or
  • representatives from different groups
• might be one of a number of such groups
• is not constituted of volunteers (who won’t be representative)
• is held in a large, sensitively arranged, comfortable room
• does not last more than 75 minutes without a break
• is such that members know:
  • why they are there
  • who everyone is
  • that they are being recorded
  • that confidentiality will be respected
  • what time they’ll finish
• concludes with a resume of next steps and a thank you.

Again you will want to transcribe your notes or tapes as soon as possible.

Holding consultative events

It is rarely necessary to hold a special event for your consultation. Here are some examples of pre-existing opportunities:

• departmental away-a-days
• training days
• planning meetings
• board meetings
• management meetings
• open days
• parents’ meetings
• residential conferences
• summer fetes
• shareholders’ meetings
• the annual general meeting
• product launches.

You will need to take care that your participants will have the energy (and you the time) to enable you to achieve your aims. Specially organised events, on the other hand, can underline the organisation’s commitment to this process.

Such events could be:

• morning, afternoon or evening meetings
• whole day conferences
• teatime to teatime conferences
• two day midweek or weekend conferences.

They can be held:

• in the organisation’s own buildings
• in meeting rooms borrowed from a partner
• at a hotel (local or otherwise)
• at a conference centre
• at a football stadium or racecourse
• in the gardens or grounds.

Such events might launch the consultation, mark its culmination, or be the consultation.

People’s thoughts must be accurately noted. You might consider recording the proceedings (perhaps on video?). Or you might appoint scribes’ to make a written record. Your event(s) are more likely to be successful if:

• attendance is voluntary but pre-event publicity is compelling (invite a celebrity, run a draw, put on a play/video, involve the local media ...)
• attendance, though non-voluntary, is rewarded (suspend normal work, invite partners/families, go orienteering, choose a luxurious hotel, provide opportunities to try go-carting, ballroom dancing, skiing ...)
• you start with an attention-grabbing talk or activity (invite an inspirational speaker, use special effects, make participants cry or laugh, emotionally move them ...)
• everybody can make an active contribution (break into groups, get participants moving, get people sticking things on boards, standing on chairs ...)
• activities are short, varied and fun (ask for stories to illustrate good or bad practice, ask people to cover the walls with post-its on which values are written ...)
• people can socialise, eat and drink (plan time for mingling, approach local catering companies or department stores for refreshments, serve beer or wine if appropriate...)
• accommodation is spacious and comfortable (ensure the temperature is right, chairs are comfortable, people can see and hear properly ... )
• you have all the equipment you need (overhead, video or slide projectors, microphones (in working order), water and short biographies for speakers, flipcharts, supplies of pens, post-it notes, paper, blu-tack, sellotape ... )

Such consultative events can be great fun. Managed well they enhance relationships throughout the organisation and generate a great deal of goodwill.

Using questionnaires

Questionnaires can be used as the basis for a telephone survey, a postal survey, or indeed a consultative event.

A successful questionnaire:

• is used for named people who are:
  • expecting it
  • have reason to complete it
• is tailored to respondents’ interests and sensitivities
• arrives at a convenient moment
• is brief, clearly focused, easy to complete
• has clear instructions, numbered questions and pages
• has a clear return date and address
• asks unambiguous questions that will elicit useful answers
• is accompanied by a pre-paid reply envelope (if possible)
• is colour-coded by type of respondent (if part of a set)
• is such that responses are easy to analyse
• is returned at a convenient time for analysts.

You might send a different questionnaire to each group, although you will probably want a set of core questions to appear on each. Some of your questions should be ‘closed’ so that you can collect some quantitative data (ten per cent of respondents agreed...).

There are different types of ‘closed’ question as follows:

• 1.Yes/no or closed multiple choice
  • Gender:
  • Male
  • Female
• 2.More than one choice
• Which values do you deem most important? (tick appropriate boxes)
  • trust
  • honesty
  • kindness
• 3.Graded responses
  • ‘Profit comes before principle.’ Do you:
  • Strongly agree
  • Agree
  • Disagree
  • Strongly disagree
• 4.Ordered choice
• Please order the following using a scale from 1-5 (1 = highest)
  • Integrity
  • Wealth
  • Kindness

Closed questions should have a minimum of two choices. If, for example, you ask the following question:

Please tick the box if you use a code of practice

You will not know whether those who don’t tick the box don’t use a code of practice, or simply haven’t answered the question. Questions should be written so that all respondents are capable of using one of the responses. Ambiguity should be avoided and you should be careful of confusing issues, as this question illustrates:

Please indicate how you use the code of practice in your job:

• Consulting the code of practice is an integral part of my job
• I occasionally consult the code of practice
• The code of practice is not helpful

The last question looks for a response not on the use of the code of practice but on its usefulness.

Not all the questions should be closed or respondents will not feel they can express their opinions. ‘Open’ questions give people a chance to express themselves. They can also elicit new ideas. Examples of open questions include:

• What do you think of ......
• How would you respond to ......
• What is your opinion of ......

Be careful to leave enough room for a full reply. A closed question can be ‘opened up’ by a space for comments.

Once you have written your questionnaire it would be sensible to hold a dummy run. This will help you to eliminate obvious ‘howlers’ and to avoid asking unanswerable or ambiguous questions or questions that elicit unwanted or hostile responses. You can conduct a dummy run on the people involved in your preliminary research or on partners, children and/or friends.

SUMMARY

Step one involves consulting your community on the aims and values of the organisation. In preparing for consultation you need to decide:

• who to consult
• your short- and long-term aims
• how you will consult
• when (and where) you will consult.

In planning how to consult there are six stages to consider:

• 1.preliminary research
• 2.the consultation proper
• 3.drafting the mission statement
• 4.a final check
• 5.finalising the mission statement
• 6.providing feedback to consultees.

In planning each stage you might draw on any combination of the following:

• interviews
• focus groups
• workshops
• consultative events
• telephone surveys (one to one or conference calls)
• postal surveys
• email surveys.

The outcome of step one will be a brand new mission statement, one that encapsulates the core values of the organisation.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

What if everyone disagrees with each other?

This is most unlikely. There might be disagreements about means versus ends, different interpretations of values or about the ordering or application of values, but not about the key aims and values themselves.

How should I deal with the sceptics?

By having your arguments ready. Try listing three reasons for thinking (a) that there are common values (b) that consultation on the organisation’s core values will enhance organisational success.