As the pandemic began to wane at the beginning of 2021, the board and staff at Castle in the Clouds turned our attention to the development of our organization’s next strategic plan. We had made exceptional progress toward the goals outlined in the plan that we adopted in 2016, and felt it was important to get a new framework in place to look toward the future after weathering the effects of COVID.

Between the board and the senior management of the organization, we felt that we had the necessary expertise and tools available to develop the plan internally. However, as we began to explore best practices in strategic plan development we repeatedly came across reminders that a good plan is rooted in the organization’s mission, vision, and values. This should not have been a problem, except that since our founding in 2006 we had never taken the time to define the values of our organization – doing that work became the first step in the development of our new strategic plan.

As Executive Director, I felt it was important for me to keep the work focused and moving forward, but I also knew that for the values to have real meaning for the organization, the process of defining them had to be a collaborative effort between the board and the staff. We organized a series of meetings and conversations to begin the process. Initially there was some concern that the two groups would have differing opinions on the values that should guide our organization, so the first meeting of each group happened separately. In preparation for these meetings each individual was encouraged to think of the list of values he or she felt should be enshrined as guiding principles for the organization. We wanted the list to reflect values we already hold collectively, but also aspirational, setting our sights on making the organization stronger and more resilient. Those were the only instructions given to the team ahead of the brainstorming sessions.

Each individual came with their own personal suggestions, which when collected resulted in a list of 30 descriptive words or phrases from the staff, and 32 from the board. After compiling the lists, I asked each individual to rank the potential values generated by their group from most important to least according to their personal opinion. I then used those rankings to assign each word or phrase a numerical value, then used an online word cloud generator to allow us to visualize the two groups of suggested organizational values. We were all excited to see that after completing the ranking exercise, the two word clouds had not only a surprising amount of overlap and agreement about what our values should be, but also about the relative importance of many key concepts.

Once we put the fear that the board and staff were not aligned about our values to rest, we set to work refining the list into a format that would not only clearly define our guiding principles, but also be useful to us as we continued down the path of developing our new strategic plan. It was quickly apparent that some of the key phrases and synonymous words were interchangeable, while others represented overlapping ideas that could be grouped together. Ultimately, as a team we settled on five values statements for the organization. With the endorsement of the entire staff leadership, the board voted to adopt these values to serve as guideposts for the organization alongside our mission and vision statements.

Castle in the Clouds Organizational Values:

Integrity – our work is grounded in honesty, transparency, and a commitment to professionalism and ethical behavior; we present historical information that is accurate and well researched.

Collaboration – open communication and teamwork are essential to our success, and we seek out partnerships that enhance and expand our impact.

Community – our organization brings together visitors, staff, volunteers, donors, and partners from all walks of life; we strive to make Castle in the Clouds as accessible and inclusive as possible.

Improvement – through hard work and adaptability we are constantly looking for new ways to engage our audiences and provide them the highest quality experiences in all that we do.

Sustainability – we protect the Lucknow Estate by being financially responsible, minimizing our impact on the environment, and ensuring faithful preservation of the buildings and grounds entrusted to our care.

Defining and adopting a clear set of organizational values has had a profound impact on our organization, by establishing the third leg of the mission/vision/values tripod to guide our work. As our new strategic plan framework came into focus, we were able to point to our values as justification and imperative for including key goals around DEAI (community), partnership development (collaboration), governance and succession planning (improvement), and environmental care (sustainability), just to name a few.

Beyond the strategic plan, we have also been working to integrate our values into our daily work. Our marketing team has been integrating public messaging about our organization’s values into social media posts, most recently referencing our value of community in a post recognizing and celebrating the start of Pride month at the beginning of June. We have also been able to lean on the support of well-defined values as we make plans for changes to our facility such as prioritizing renewable sources of power like solar or adding ramps and railings to improve accessibility across the property. We have started discussing our values with prospective employees during interviews, and as part of new staff orientation, to ensure that new members of the team understand what our organization stands for from the very beginning.

The work to define our organizational values was a key component in helping us to continue our evolution and growth, as well as our recovery from the pandemic. Now that the work is complete, I think we all agree that we cannot believe we waited so long to have these important conversations. The benefits to the organization are only starting to be realized, and I am certain they will continue long into the future.