0:04
When we're in organizations at LRN or in other context in which I have done this,
and we have to try to figure out what that unique constellation of strengths is
that's going to allow that company to truly create principled performance.
There's often a whole bunch of ways in which we need to operationalize
the journey to be able to have a hypothesis and then figure out what's that
unique constellation for that specific organization.
We do it in a whole bunch of ways.
It's never exactly the same and it depends on the organization in terms of how
big it is, in terms of how complex it is.
But I think the thing that we've learned and certainly the thing that Angela taught
me when we were in her class is that you actually have to go and talk to people.
You can't just assume that your hypothesis is true.
I mean, often the hypothesis that leaders in the organization might come up with
around the certain kind of strengths or values that will really work for
them might not hold true across the organization.
So we have to do a lot of work in terms of trying to figure out what
are the quantitative and qualitative ways that we go and talk to people and
measure what it is that they feel is most important for their organization
and we do that in a bunch of ways.
Usually when we start the process, we actually start from a qualitative
perspective, we start with interviews often we start with leadership interviews
because we have a perspective that leadership in organization has a pretty
good high level over view of what's important in that organization and they
usually have lots of strategic insight and context to bring to bear as well.
And so we start with interviewing senior leaders in an organization and
asking them questions about what's most important to them?
But, we don't just stop there because,
we recognize that the perspective of leadership is just one.
Then, we go out and we talk to as many people as we possibly can.
The large organizations that comport of where there's been 50 thousand employees,
let's say.
Usually, we ask for volunteers.
We go out and we do focus groups and
workshops with groups of employees at a time.
And we create the context where they're able to work through,
what are the values that are going to be most important to them.
And we do that repeatedly, with the same kind of structure again, and again.
So then we have a whole bunch of qualitative input
when we go through and code all of that data we try to figure out what are the consistent
values that reach the top?
What are the strengths from a behavioral perspective that individuals within
the organization consistently believe are most important and
then we start to turn it in to quantitative surveys because we've only
talked to a portion of the organization.
So then we go and we survey as many people as we possibly can and
we ask them to ultimately work through and think through.
What are the values and strengths and behaviors that are going to be most
important in their roles, in their context to allow them
to be able to achieve the mission and the vision of the organization.
2:56
Sometimes, it really does seem like there's an enormous amount of overlap
between something like the via inventory and the values, the behaviors
that come out of the entire process that we go through in organizations.
In fact, a lot of the process that we go through on organizations almost feels
like some of the process that Chris Peterson and Martin Seligman and
a whole team of researchers that put together through characteristics and
virtues went to even come up with the inventory of 24.
The reason why we don't just use via for example
is because we feel it's really important for the organization to own the words.
To be able to feel like this is home grown, this is their own strengths.
And even if the output might look really similar to VIA the thing that I've learned
in the process is that the words actually don't matter.
The things that are common,
the things that are universal will rise to the surface.
But what is most important, is that people can truly identify with the values and
behaviors, and strengths that we come up within a process.
Claire Robertson-Kraft, Ph.D.Director, ImpactED
Angela Duckworth, Ph.D.Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Psychology
