Most companies have a list of values on a wall. Fewer ask their people how those values should show up in the work. Pernod Ricard USA did.
The question
The company asked everyone one thing:
What is one actionable idea that would bring our company values to life in the way we work?
The question is specific on purpose. It does not ask people to describe the values or rate them. It asks for something someone could actually do on Monday.
Who took part
Pernod Ricard USA shared the project with its whole company of 930 employees. 450 of them joined. Together they contributed:
- 386 ideas, written by the people doing the work.
- 42,175 votes, as people were shown two ideas at a time and picked the better one.
That is a large number of votes for a company of that size, and it is the reason the ranking can be trusted. Every idea was compared with many others by many different people, not just by the person who wrote it or the person who read it first.
What the format did
Two features of the project shaped the result.
Voting came first. Writing an idea takes effort, but choosing between two ideas takes seconds. People who would never post an idea of their own still joined in, and their votes counted fully.
Everyone saw the same thing. The ranking did not pass through a manager. The ideas that the company backed most rose to the top, and people could see that the group had chosen them.
What came next
The project ran for one week. In that week, ideas from across the company turned into action, and the leadership team had a ranked list to work from instead of a pile of comments.
The strategy and transformation lead at Pernod Ricard USA described the result this way:
"The platform was a powerful way to engage the team quickly and left us with significant actionable outcomes."
SVP Strategy & Transformation, Pernod Ricard USA
What to take from it
You do not need a large company to run the same kind of project. A few things made this one work, and they apply at any size:
- One clear question with many good answers.
- A leader who asked it publicly and said what would happen with the answers.
- A short window, so the energy did not fade.
- A decision at the end, so that people could see the ideas go somewhere.
If you would like to see how a project like this looks from a participant's side, you can try the demo. It takes a couple of minutes.