I was in New Zealand for a couple days this week. I caught up with my colleagues at Future of People and Organisations (FPO) – more about FPO in a future post. It reminded me that I should tell you about the project Stewart Forsyth, on of my fellow directors, and I did for an Auckland law firm. We used narrative techniques to help define their brand as part of a talent magnetism program. Stewart has written about talent magnetism here.

The most interesting outcome for me was noting how the values which emerged from the narrative were, in some cases, quite different to their stated values. The stated values were things like professionalism, integrity, innovation. A value which emerged was “being nice to people”. I wonder if that would have been included in a formal values creation exercise?