The development of a new strategic plan enabled us to not only establish our business aims for the next five years, but it also provided an opportunity to review our purpose and values to ensure that ‘how’ we do things reflects the Clanmil we want to be.
Values are so important to Clanmil’s success as they help embed the culture by describing the way we do things and importantly how we want the business to be experienced by customers, colleagues and partners. A positive and consistent experience helps improve satisfaction, reinforces a positive reputation and ultimately leads to business success in achieving our purpose.
The new strategic plan outlines our three values: Leave a positive experience; Believe in Better and Achieve Together - these were not random selections. Back in 2020 many colleagues took part in workshops for the development of the strategy where they were asked what was good about Clanmil, what needs to change or stop, what should our strategy include and what do we value most. There was a huge amount of consensus from colleagues about what kind of organisation Clanmil was. Words such as compassionate, innovative, bold, respectful and open came through very strongly, as did a desire to build and strengthen communities, provide opportunities and strive for more. This feedback was all brought together to create the values we see in the strategic plan today.
It was important that our new values felt real and true to Clanmil, so having colleagues involved in their development was crucial. The workshops helped to bring out what was really good about our business and what we want to be, so although the statements might feel a little aspirational in places, colleague should be able to see the Clanmil culture stamped all over them.
Each of the new values is accompanied by a short description that gives further context and clarity to the statements and this was intentional as there was a concern that individual words could get lost in translation. Statements such as: ‘We see the person, not the problem’ and ‘we remain curious’ aim to provide colleagues with almost a playbook of how to behave to bring these to life. Our values help shape how we should behave as colleagues and having them clearly expressed like this helps to make them more meaningful. They lay out what’s important to us to ensure that everyone is on the same bus and heading in the same direction and this is vital if we want to create a consistent experience of Clanmil. It also gives us an opportunity to have conversations when behaviours are not aligned to our values or for people to choose that this is not the organisation for them.
The new strategic plan provides an opportunity to revisit and reconnect with Clanmil’s values and colleagues have engaged with them like never before. I think because colleagues were involved in the development of these values, they feel more familiar, and it does make it easier to see how they can apply every day. Looking forward I’d love to hear people talking about them, sharing examples and celebrating where they’ve been brought to life as it’s the stories that really stick with you.