The Alpaca values exercise: results & analysis
Team Letter | January 2, 2024
January 2, 2024
HAPPY NEW YEAR, ALPACA!!!!
I am so excited to be welcoming in this absolutely beautiful new year with you all, and we are SO full of possibility and opportunity right now!
I want to thank ALL of you for doing such intentional, thoughtful work on the Alpaca Values meetings and exercise before the end of the year. I had no idea how much it would impact how I feel about coming into 2024, and how much it would teach me about each of you, about our company, and about our year ahead. With no further ado, I wanted to share with you some insights from this process!
Here’s how I did it: I took the sum total of all of the values that you all identified as your Top 10, Top 5, and Top 3 values, and made one big list of all of them. I then assigned “points” for each – if it was in your top 10, it got 1 point. In your top 5, 2 points. In your top 3, 3 points. This shows us which values are the most important to you personally, and to us as a team!
Our Top Values as a Team
When they’re all combined, I could easily see our top values as a team right now. Here they are:
Accomplishment (Total Value Score: 10) - Succeeding in reaching goals.
Impact (Total Value Score: 8) - Making a difference, changing the world.
Fun (Total Value Score: 7) - Enjoyment, playfulness, sense of play.
Creativity (Total Value Score: 6) - Typically associated with the ability to produce new ideas, approaches, or actions.
Passion (Total Value Score: 6) - Enthusiasm, powerful attraction.
Yep – we are BIG accomplishment people!! 3 people had Accomplishment as a Top 3 value, and 2 more had it somewhere on the list. You can see from our values that reaching big goals and changing the world is what we’re all about, but not without FUN! I love that these are our top 3. And rounding it out with creativity and passion feels so true to us, too!
Who had the most overlap?
I was dying to know where there was the most overlap in people’s values. Overlapping values might mean that those people think about things in similar ways, have similar motivations, or just work really well together. I loved to see where people overlap! Before you keep scrolling, take a guess! Who do you think overlapped the most?
So, according to our analysis, the winners of “most overlapping values” are:
- Marina and Alissa: 5 overlaps
- Lauren and Kaitlynn: 5 overlaps
What values are missing?
Another cool thing is to see which values are NOT listed by any team member. These are areas that we might consider for hiring or development:
Affection
Commitment
Courage
Equality
Fairness
Individuality
Loyalty
Peace
Power
Respect
Responsibility
Spirituality
Want to see it visually? I did too. :)
Here is a chart that shows you from our TOP values to the least represented what each of them looks like across the full team. It’s cool to see where we have overlap, too!
And then, to get REALLY nerdy about it, I created a network map that shows all of our connections. The values are larger or smaller based on how many points they have total, (so you’ll see our top 5 are the biggest ones) and the connection lines between them are thicker or thinner based on how important they are to YOU (Top 10, Top 5, Top 3). Here’s how that maps out!
I’d love to hear what you think of all of this! Does it resonate with you? How can we leverage our values for BIG accomplishments next year? Where should we consider hiring to round out our values or build upon them? Who do you want to work on a project with this year to put your overlapping values to work?
I’m so excited to build something amazing this year with this creative, passionate, FUN team, focused on big accomplishment and impact!
Let’s GO, Alpaca!!
KB