Education
Leading with value
How to develop a set of core values
By Patrick Mayock
Smart Business Orange County | June 2008
Page 1 of 2
Michael Drake
chancellor, University of California, Irvine
How do you align the viewpoints of 39,267 people toward a common goal? Ask Michael Drake, and he’ll tell you
it all comes down to values.
In 2005, when he took over
as chancellor of the University
of California, Irvine — the
third-largest employer in
Orange County, with an annual
budget of $1.5 billion — he
realized he couldn’t just dictate
his vision of the school to its
27,000 students and 12,267 faculty and staff. Instead, by
using feedback from university constituents and by looking
back on the values that had
served him previously, he
developed a set of core values
to guide his decision-making.
By creating a description of
the ideal person who would
encompass the essence of the
university, Drake settled on a
number of values to present to
key stakeholders in speeches
and during meetings. He then
gauged their reactions, made
modifications and, with his
management team, identified
the seven values that have since
guided the campus community.
Smart Business spoke with
Drake about how to define the
labels for your organization’s
values and why you should
wear them like an old suit.
Get feedback. It’s always important to elicit feedback for a couple of reasons. One, none of us
knows everything. You can
always learn more from others.
Sometimes, the way that you
or I might describe something
makes sense to us, but it does-n’t translate well to other people you’re speaking with. You
can develop these values in a
quiet, meditative space, but
you have to take them on the
road in speeches or in meetings or in other things.
At my first freshman convocation, I used these as themes,
and then I would hear and feel
how they would resonate with
the audience or help us with
the message or describe the
kinds of behaviors that we
were interested in.
Getting feedback from people you work with on which
ones are very helpful, which
ones are useful, which ones
work, and places where you
have to modify those things
are critically important.
We did that at the beginning
and refined and modified
things. These are not the laws
of the universe. One needs to
feel free to add or subtract or
modify or tune as you learn
more or as you evolve forward. You want to be consistent and be true to the values,
but they’re not rigid, immutable
laws that couldn’t be improved.
