How do you turn company values into a tool that actually changes the business?

Client: 

Better Society Capital

Timeline: 

3 Months

Align With Leaders

Better Society Capital was entering a new phase. Its strategy was sharpening. Its operating model was evolving. And as an organisation working at the intersection of capital, policy and social impact, it needed clearer alignment around how people should work day to day.

Values were part of that.

But the challenge was not to invent a new set of inspiring words.
BSC already had a strong sense of purpose. What it needed was a framework that could support better decisions, clearer expectations and more consistent behaviours across the organisation.

So the work started with the business itself. We reviewed strategy papers, operating model principles, internal reports and existing values documentation to understand BSC’s direction of travel. What pressures the organisation was responding to. And what kinds of behaviours would be needed to deliver on its ambitions.

Become The People

We spent time inside the organisation. Dozens of one-to-one interviews were conducted across teams. Leadership groups from different departments were engaged. And focus groups were held with staff representatives. The aim was simple: understand how the organisation actually worked.

What behaviours already existed. Where the current values helped. And where they didn’t. What emerged was a clear picture.

People across BSC were deeply committed to the mission. But the existing values were not doing enough practical work inside the organisation. They were difficult to recall, not consistently understood, and rarely used to guide everyday decisions.

In fact, most employees could not name all of the values. Even fewer could describe the behaviours associated with them.

That matters. Because values should do more than sound good. They should help people navigate ambiguity, understand expectations and make better decisions when the rulebook runs out.

To understand what might prevent the right behaviours from taking hold, we also applied behavioural science analysis. Using the COM-B model, we explored the capability, opportunity and motivation barriers that might stop people acting in the ways the organisation needed.

This allowed us to move beyond aspiration and into implementation — identifying where structures, norms or workloads might get in the way of change.

Create New Solutions

From this research we built a behaviourally grounded values framework shaped by BSC’s strategy and operating model. Rather than treating values as abstract principles, the framework translated them into a practical structure: values, behaviours and actions. This made the system operational.

The work included:

• Evaluation of the existing values framework
• Consolidation of insights from interviews, workshops and internal documents
• Identification and prioritisation of the behaviours most critical to BSC’s future success
• Behavioural analysis to identify barriers to adoption
• Development and testing of new value territories with leadership teams
• Construction of a final framework linking values to specific behaviours and actions
  
  

Importantly, the values were born from inside the organisation itself.

Our role was to surface what already existed inside BSC, the beliefs, expectations and ways of working that employees recognised as authentic, and shape them into a clear and usable system.

The final framework focused on three core themes: mission, expertise and understanding. Together they captured how BSC delivers its purpose while working with rigour, insight and collaboration.

Deliver Sustainable Change

The outcome was not simply a new set of values. It was a practical behavioural framework that can support how the organisation operates.

The final system connects values directly to behaviours and everyday actions. That allows the framework to influence real organisational moments: decision-making, collaboration, leadership expectations and performance conversations.

In other words, values became part of the operating model.

The work also identified the barriers that could prevent adoption, giving BSC a clearer path to embedding the framework across the employee experience — from onboarding and team leadership to development and organisational accountability.

For leadership teams and HR leaders, this is the difference between values that decorate an organisation and values that direct it.

Because when done properly, values are not a branding exercise.
They are a behavioural system that helps an organisation work better.

Contact Us

If internal alignment is top of your to-do list, let’s talk: hello@3800.co.uk

Improve, all ways.