#3 - Values, Dashboards and soo much more 🫠

Hey folks, so this week i’ve been extra busy, building, refining and creating and i’m going to share the joyous 🍓🍍🍉 of my labour with you all.

It’s been a bit of an odd week for me, really getting heads down and building, and I sometimes feel like a bit of an imposter with the more advanced areas (I mean, I can’t actually code)… BUT, the more I build, the more I learn, and watching what the tools I’m using, like Replit and Lovable create, helps me understand more and more each time.

From refining my Onboarding App, to building Pulse, to creating a course for People Ops practitioners on using AI, to rebuilding my website, to building an approach for creating better values and behaviours for your business, it’s amazing what you can get done in a very short period of time!

This week, I’m going to focus on:

• Restructuring Values with AI, using my consulting knowledge of this project, and AI as an assistant to make it easier

• Sharing Pulse, a People Ops dashboard MVP

• Some more interesting news and articles

• A deep dive guide for HR leaders on prompting

Who Am I?

For new subscribers, I’m Matt Bradburn. I was VP People at Peakon, built and sold the DBR community to Talentful, built and sold People Collective to Scede and now working on several “small bets”.

I have been using AI in my work for the last 2 years, starting from nothing and now able to build agents and small apps, or provide deep research to clients to solve their challenges.

Now I want to share my learnings with you all.

My focus: Combining the People with the Robot - it’s the best way!

1. Atlas Partners - spending less time on this, as I think I should double down on AI and people ops projects that I’m known for
2. People x Robots - This is going to be my core focus - consulting (Progression, Levelling, Comp & Reward, Equity structuring, performance and manager dev programmes, all with an AI assistance), training (Course live on Maven) and of course my newsletter and open sourcing tools and processes for you all 🥳

I have a new site coming soon for PeoplexRobots coming this week, WIP below, but if you have People Challenges and Projects you want done with exceptional quality, speed and attention to detail, at a low price - drop me a message at [email protected] 

🎯 Deep Dive of the Week

So I was inspired by a comedic but accurate video this week to help companies build their Values and Behaviours in a much more impactful way. I HIGHLY recommend anyone in People Ops to watch this video…

TL;DR - Get the entire piece of work to make your life easy below:

PS - I used to charge companies around £8,000 for this piece of work… 🫠

The Challenge:

Values are bland and meaningless. Everyone chooses the same ones. They also take an approach which doesn’t get to the crux of the issue. Values statements often end up as forgotten platitudes on office walls. But when done right, values become the living foundation of your culture—guiding decisions, shaping behaviors, and creating a shared identity. How I solved this:

I used a combination of my experience working with companies, as well as effective prompting, to build you all a roadmap and plan to use in your company.

Roadmap Buildout

This part was pretty easy, and formed the basis of my core prompting. Having run the process before, taking 4 weeks end to end is about standard for it. I asked Claude to refine this to make it nice and easy to read, then use it as the core to the full thing.

You can find the roadmap AND all the following materials HERE

Week 1: Leadership Foundation - 60 minutes

Start with the founders/leaders to establish the core purpose before involving the wider team.

Create a thoughtful questionnaire for founders/leaders to explore the core values of our organization. Include questions that:
- Uncover the founding story and original motivation
- Identify what makes our approach distinctive
- Explore the behaviors we want to encourage and discourage
- Examine what success looks like beyond financial metrics
- Reveal the non-negotiable principles we would defend even at a cost

Format this as 10-12 open-ended questions that encourage reflection and specific examples rather than abstract concepts. Include brief instructions for completion.

This prompt gives us a great output for founders to use in their work. I followed it up with a prompt to create a google doc, which gives further context to this:

Week 2: Team Engagement Workshop - 90 minutes

AI-Enhanced Miro Board Design

The ideal setup for your team session is a cross section of folks across the business. Doesn’t have to be done out of office! Does have to be facilitated well:

• Share the leadership themes as context, not conclusions

• Facilitate activities that draw out stories and behaviors, not abstract concepts

• Guide the team to identify patterns and recurring themes

• Collectively draft initial value statements based on these themes

Design a collaborative Miro board template for a team values workshop with the following elements:
1. A welcome section explaining the purpose and process
2. A section displaying the founder themes identified (without calling them "values" yet)
3. An individual reflection exercise where team members can add sticky notes about:
   - Stories that exemplify our organization at its best
   - Behaviors they've witnessed that should be celebrated
   - Principles they believe should guide decision-making
4. A grouping exercise with clear instructions for categorizing similar themes
5. A voting mechanism for identifying resonant concepts
6. A section for articulating value statements based on the prioritized themes

Include visual elements, clear instructions for each activity, and time estimates. The board should accommodate 5-25 participants.

This then gave me a great output for a Miro board, and I have shared it with you here. NOTE - this is one I have then used this week with a client of mine. So you can see how it looks in practise 💪 - obvs all details and names removed lol.

Week 3: Synthesis and Refinement - 2 hours work

AI-Enhanced Feedback Collation

Prompt for synthesizing workshop output. The key to doing this well is to run the synthesis using a clear format, which we have set out here.

I also attached a prior document which I wanted to use for formatting purposes. Adding docs to the prompts can be incredibly helpful to get the output in the perfect format, particularly if you have templates from the past or things you find from the internet.

Analyze the following raw output from our values workshop and the founder documents[paste all notes, stories, voted themes].

Create a synthesis that:
1. Identifies the 5-7 strongest recurring themes
2. Groups the supporting stories and behaviors under each theme
3. Highlights points of consensus and any notable tensions
4. Proposes draft value statements that capture each theme authentically
5. Suggests 3-5 specific behaviors that would demonstrate each value in action
6. Add in examples, positive and negative of these in action
7. Suggest recruitment questions
8. Use the attached format document, ensuring length, syntax and approach is the same https://peopleleaders.notion.site/FinEdge-Values-1a71569da344803fa3c7f69c2e1f31b7?pvs=4 

Format this as a structured report with clear sections, preserving direct quotes from participants where they powerfully illustrate a concept.

Share this synthesis with a representative group for feedback, making adjustments to ensure authenticity and then you’re really cooking 🧑‍🍳

The output should then look like this:

EXAMPLE VALUES AND BEHAVIOURS WITH POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EXAMPLES

Week 4: Testing for Resonance

Before finalising, test your draft values to ensure they'll guide real decisions:

• Apply them to past difficult decisions - would they have helped?

• Consider future scenarios - do they provide clear guidance?

• Examine edge cases - are there situations where they'd conflict?

Prompt for generating test scenarios:

Create 5-7 realistic but challenging scenarios our organization might face that would test our draft values. For each scenario:
1. Describe a specific situation requiring a decision
2. Explain why this would create tension or competing priorities
3. Ask how our draft values would guide us in this situation
4. Include perspectives from different stakeholders (customers, team members, community)

Focus on scenarios relevant to our industry and stage. Make these concrete enough that they prompt meaningful discussion rather than theoretical debates.

Get the founders to review the outcomes of this, and check with a couple of folks in the focus group as well. Below you can find an example of this testing 🦾

VALUES TESTING SCENARIOS EXAMPLES

Week 5: Communication and Integration (Ongoing)

AI-Enhanced Communication Materials

Prompt for creating the communications package:

Based on our finalized organizational values [insert values], create a comprehensive communications package that includes:

1. A one-page overview explaining our values and how they were developed
2. Individual slides for each value with:
   - The value statement
   - The underlying meaning
   - 2-3 behavioral examples of the value in action
   - 1-2 stories that exemplify the value
3. A set of discussion questions for team meetings to explore each value
4. Suggestions for visual representations or metaphors for each value
5. Draft language for incorporating these values into our:
   - Recruitment materials
   - Onboarding process
   - Performance reviews
   - Decision-making frameworks

The tone should be authentic to our organization's voice while being clear and inspiring.

AI-Enhanced Integration Template

Prompt for creating an integration plan:

Create a 90-day plan for embedding our new organizational values into our operations. Include:

1. A week-by-week timeline with specific integration activities
2. Suggestions for recurring rituals that reinforce each value
3. A framework for recognizing and celebrating behaviors that exemplify values
4. Meeting templates that incorporate values-based reflection
5. Decision-making frameworks that explicitly reference our values
6. Metrics to track how effectively we're living our values
7. A process for regular review and evolution of values over time

This should be a practical implementation plan rather than an aspirational document, with owner suggestions and success metrics for each activity.

Output

Ok, this is actually hilarious how over engineered this is, I would get prompting again to simplify and focus on impact and value, but since there’s only so much time in the day, here you go, have at it!

EXAMPLE HERE

FINAL VALUES EXAMPLE DRAFT HERE

Remember that values are never "done." They must be continuously reinforced through:

1. Regular storytelling that celebrates examples of values in action

2. Decision transparency that explicitly connects choices to values

3. Accountability systems that recognize and reward value-aligned behaviors

4. Onboarding processes that immerse new team members in your values

5. Evolution mechanisms that allow values to grow as your organization matures

Conclusion: Values as Your Cultural Operating System

When done right, values become more than words—they're the operating system for your organisation's culture. They provide the framework for decisions large and small, create a sense of belonging and purpose, and help you attract the right people who will thrive in your environment.

By using this co-creation approach, enhanced with AI tools to streamline the process, you'll develop values that reflect both your foundational vision and your collective wisdom—values people will actually use rather than ignore.

GET THE FULL APPROACH TO THIS IN NOTION BELOW:

🤯 PS - I created all of the above in under an hour…

If you want to build the capability to run fast and get great work done in People Ops, using AI for Day to Day, Project Deliver or Analysis, join the other people leaders taking my course, starting on Maven, 17th March.

I want to help as many folks in the space build their skills as much as possible over the next year.

It’s critical to do so, as we’re at an inflection point. 20% of people will continue to grow because they use AI effectively, but 80% will stagnate.

I want to get as many people into the top 20% as possible - so they don’t get left behind.

You can find the detailed syllabus below, sign up today as spaces limited to 20 people…

💡 Quick Win of the Week

Following on from my approach to prompting last week, I have built you all a guide for HR prompts, structured in that style 💪 🥳

LINK TO THE GUIDE

🧠 Product Updates

Butter Onboarding App

Thanks to Thomas Forstner and his team at Juro for the product feedback 🥳

I’ve implemented the following:

1. ✅ Fixed meetings being scheduled from today - now properly uses the future start date

2. ✅ Added proper calendar conflict checking

3. ✅ Added Zoom link auto-generation

4. ✅ Implemented company-wide templates system

5. ✅ Added recurring meetings option

6. ✅ Added specific day scheduling

7. ✅ Implemented calendar conflict detection

8. ✅ Fixed working hours and lunch break handling

All the critical bugs and requested future features have been implemented while keeping the implementation simple and maintainable. The system now:

• Respects start dates

• Handles calendar conflicts

• Supports templates

• Supports recurring meetings

• Respects working hours and lunch breaks

• Generates Zoom links

• Allows specific day scheduling

Pulse App

If there was one thing I was excited about this week, it was this… and it seems you lot were too…

📰 News That Matters for HR

Anthropic releases Claude Sonnet 3.7 🎓

Why does this matter?

Claude has been my go to for writing in a much more human way, this release has only gone on to improve that. If you’re creating employee centric comms, or guides, or frameworks, Claude is the best model to use to reduce your time editing them afterwards

EU AI Act and the implications for People Teams

Why does this matter?

Organisations must ensure staff members dealing with AI systems have sufficient AI literacy, tailored to their technical knowledge and the context of AI use… UH OHHH, it’s like GDPR alllllll over again 😭

Key Dates:

• February 2, 2025:

  • Provisions on prohibited AI practices become applicable39.

  • AI literacy requirements take effect69.

  August 2, 2025:

  • Specific obligations for general-purpose AI models become applicable1.

  August 2, 2026:

  • Most other obligations under the AI Act become applicable1.

  • Requirements for 'standalone' high-risk AI systems, including those used in employment contexts, come into effect4.

  August 2, 2027:

  • Remaining provisions become applicable

Implications for HR and Employers

1. High-Risk Classification: Many HR-related AI systems, such as those used for recruitment, employee evaluation, and workforce management, are likely to be classified as high-risk25.

2. Compliance Obligations: Employers using high-risk AI systems must adhere to strict requirements, including data quality management, human oversight, and transparency45.

3. AI Inventory and Assessment: Organisations need to catalog and assess their AI systems to determine risk levels and ensure compliance5.

4. Training and Upskilling: HR teams must develop AI literacy programs and policies to educate employees on AI concepts, risks, and ethical considerations5.

5. Governance Frameworks: Establishing AI governance boards will be crucial for monitoring and guiding ethical AI use across organisations5.

👋 Let's Connect!

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🔗 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattbradburn/ 

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Remember: AI in HR doesn't have to be complicated. Let's figure it out together, one practical step at a time.