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What do we value?

02.08.2019 | KnowledgeAffairs

"It's basically the connections with people that give life its value." In the spirit of the great German natural scientist Alexander von Humboldt, we set out together on a journey to our values. Starting point were the values of each individual in the HA team. The company values of HeadlineAffairs were sought.

Values in space

In order to guarantee the optimal oxygen supply for our brains during the concentrated workshop, we decided to use one of the many Munich parks as a conference location. It so happened that in this park three trees were positioned so favourably that we could use them as "corners" for our value triangle - consisting of trust, order and knowledge. This space of thinking is based on the belief-polarity constellation according to Matthias Varga von Kibed (German logician and science theorist); a method that shows which value concepts are lived by an individual or in a team.

In the beginning there were abstract questions: What are our values? What do we stand for? What makes us what we are? What is important to us when working together? Later it became more concrete: "Your superior sent an important e-mail to the customer with some spelling mistakes. You stand on cc. How do you react?" Now everyone was challenged to deal with their own values in a self-reflective way and to make their decision from a "corner" of the value triangle. A lively discussion quickly arose on the basis of the different approaches, which brought the values within the HA team to light. While some would initially discuss the observation among colleagues, others would prefer a spontaneous and direct reference.

What makes us different?

The employees of HeadlineAffairs, standing in a circle. Everyone is blindfolded and holding a piece of the blue ribbon that is stretched around the circle.

After about five hours of values workshop, the motto was: "Where there is community, there are also rules for success". Blindfolded, the HA team was to get a rope into shape. The rope should be placed on the floor as a rectangle. What sounds supposedly simple only worked (to a limited extent) after the team had agreed on a few "leaders" to capture the group dynamics and thus provide structure.

In a follow-up session, the insights gained are compiled into a value framework that reflects our common corporate culture. Two insights in advance:

  1. The workshop not only served to identify our common corporate values, but also helped us to get to know each other better.
  2. The corporate value "teamwork" was and is the foundation of our values. It supports agency development.


This does not mean that values do not need to be constantly questioned, renewed and adapted, because the team continues to develop, new employees join, old ones leave.


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