Our Approach

Values are the cornerstone of an organization’s culture — they are statements of how we act as we work to achieve the why of our operation. When culture and strategy are aligned, like gears in a well-oiled machine, employees can see the mission and action and understand what they need to do to achieve it.

At InnerWill, we work with senior leaders to unlock the potential of their organizations by aligning their mission, vision and strategy with their organizational values, their leadership philosophy and their internal processes.

Like our individual leadership framework, the Values Based Organizations (VBO) framework describes five interrelated practices that organizations must adopt to sustain a Values Based culture. This framework serves as our guide to assess the organizations we partner with and develop a customized approach to their development as a Values Based Organization.

Where We Start:  The starting point in an engagement with InnerWill is determined based on discovery and a needs assessment.

• Take Stock is often the starting point for organizations with an effective senior team in place. Using a survey, focus groups, or other data gathering, we can help the team to see the organization clearly rather than working from perception. It can also help a senior team see how the values of the organization are currently viewed, and to help them develop their values using language that is already meaningful in the organization.
• Clarify Culture may be a starting point for an organization that has done some recent surveying and is ready to define or refine its Mission, Vision, and Values.
• Choose to Lead may be the starting point for an organization with a new or dysfunctional senior team. To effectively engage in the Take Stock or Clarify Culture work, we may recommend workshops and facilitated sessions to build leadership capacity and strengthen relationships within the team.

Our Approach:  We typically propose working in phases, describing the initial phase in detail based on our discovery assessment with the following phases only roughly sketched out. Many organizations like to see the “whole picture,” and it’s also important to be able to adapt the plan based on the learning that will take place in phase one.