Values you can check every day, starting with the partners
A medium-sized architecture practice, around ten staff, four partners including two newcomers. Values written six years ago, reconfirmed since, never questioned. And a team that, without saying so in meetings, no longer quite recognised itself in them.
At a glance
Architecture practice · Four partners, then the whole team · Partner sessions and culture survey, ongoing
The challenge: Values on display for six years that the team no longer lived. The partners accept that the gap is measured on them too.
Our approach: Three sessions with the partners, an anonymous culture survey of the team, then a feedback session open to all.
Result: Every area now has a named owner, and steering no longer rests on a single person. The work continues.
The values were on the wall. The team no longer lived them.
The practice was coming out of several difficult years. Management that focused heavily on the month’s financial targets had created constant pressure, carried by a few people and passed on to the whole team. The arrival of new partners opened a window: to redistribute roles, and to ask again what holds the practice together.
What was at stake: not rewriting fine words, but narrowing the gap between what the practice displays and what the team experiences, then bringing it to life in governance.
What came up from the ground:
- Real mutual support in a crisis, much less in day-to-day routine.
- Juniors well trained on the technical side, but alone in front of the client and on site.
- Contradictory instructions depending on who gives them, and projects changing hands with no history.
- Shortened upfront design time, the cost of which surfaces later at tender stage or on site.
- A routine that had become mechanical: even the best projects are handled without emotion.
- Risks the team had itself written down a few years earlier, and which had come true.
The partners’ challenge: deciding as four for the whole team, without the decision coming “from above”.
“From the wall to everyday life”: three sessions in a small group, then we open up
We built a three-stage journey with the partners, facilitated by a senior Lead coach-consultant. The principle: set out the roles first, then the values, then have the whole thing checked by the team, anonymously and through a third party. The substance of the profession belongs to the partners; Lead holds the framework, draws things out and makes sure the decision is collective.
Session 1: reorganising as four
- A shared direction: rebalancing the numbers and the people, without setting them against each other.
- A guarantor logic by domain (design, delivery, finance, HR, business development, internal management): one ultimately accountable person who steers without doing, and decides after consultation.
- Pairs to share the load, and clear warning signals to raise a problem without waiting for the next meeting.
- New rituals: themed team meetings, regular financial reviews.
Session 2: our stated values, our lived values
Intention: move from a list of words to observable decision criteria, and name the gap through facts, not accusations.
- Rereading the historic values and earlier team work: is this still us?
- The sticker exercise: for each value, one score for yourself and one for the team. The gap between the two becomes the working topic.
- A mirror: what the team, absent from the room, had written beforehand, read before deciding.
- Three real decisions replayed, and three tensions arbitrated: quality or deadline, numbers or people, candour or connection.
- For each value: the behaviour the partners commit to first, and what they stop doing.
Between sessions: the team speaks up
- A short, anonymous culture survey open to the whole practice, built on what the partners had just written.
- Four blocks: values (as I live them, as the team lives them), day-to-day work, view of the partners, open questions (stop, start, free comments).
- A raw compilation, with no added interpretation, then an overall summary: no names, no results partner by partner.
After: feed back and decide together
- Feedback delivered by the partners themselves, in a team meeting.
- For each recurring point: what the partners have already set in motion, and a column left blank, to be filled in with the team.
- Two or three first actions chosen together, each with an owner and a deadline.
- A further session to set down in black and white a partners’ charter: roles, governance and values.
The signature method: the stated / lived gap, measured by a third party
A value is not a word on the wall. It is a criterion that decides when two options can both be defended, and a behaviour you can see someone carry out. The test: if this value has never cost you a client, a deadline or a little comfort, does it really exist?
The method links three perspectives on the same values: what I experience, what I think the team experiences, what the team itself says, anonymously. It builds on the guarantor logic: each value retained leaves with a system that embodies it, a guarantor and a date. A values exercise that isn’t measured remains decorative.
A clear map of who owns what, and a team voice with the tools to be heard
- A map of guarantors by domain, validated by the partners, with the points still to be decided clearly identified.
- A responsibility grid by activity: who analyses, who decides, who executes, who checks.
- Session minutes with an action plan, and an owner and a deadline for each action.
- The culture survey compilation (figures and full verbatims, anonymous) and an overall summary for the whole team.
- A feedback deck designed to be completed in the meeting, not just presented.
- Formalised operating rules: a partner present at critical client meetings, junior and senior pairs, the right to postpone a meeting if you’re not ready, rules for communicating with clients.
A culture you read in actions, not on the website
The assignment is ongoing. The first effects are structural: the management load is no longer concentrated on a single person, and each domain now has an identified guarantor. The survey also gave a sharp picture, shared by everyone: the partners’ willingness to listen is recognised, clarity about what is expected much less so.
The programme aims to:
- narrow the gap between stated and lived values, starting with those where it is widest;
- give staff what they ask for first: knowing what is expected of them, and being supported to deliver it;
- make other people’s work visible and secure project handovers;
- restore upfront design time, rather than paying the price later on site;
- make sustainability a given in every project, no longer an option;
- anchor a partner governance where a few decide, but accept being assessed by all.
The practice has been through a complicated dynamic in recent years. I notice that with […] the changes within the practice, a new dynamic is trying to emerge so that we can work in better conditions. It’s encouraging.
Staff member, architecture practice (anonymous culture survey)Holding the framework so the partners can say everything to each other
- Facilitation that protects difficult conversations: writing before speaking, describing facts rather than judgements, leaving individual cases outside the room.
- A third-party perspective that makes possible what a partner cannot get alone: a candid answer from their team.
- A direct link between values and governance: each value gets a guarantor, a ritual and a deadline.
- Knowledge of the team built over several years of support, in the service of an accurate reading with no complacency.
Do your values still say what your team experiences?
If your partners want to clarify who owns what, and check that the culture you display is the one your people actually live, we can build a tailored journey with you. Let’s talk.
