I'm currently under commission to put together a 360 profile which has been custom built, in order to measure the alignment to values in an organization.

For those that don't know how a 360 degree profile works, it's quite simple: Your manager, sub-ordinates and peers are all fill out a questionnaire, the questions are rated on a scale, and the outputs from this are then mapped so that there is a 360 degree view of how your behaviours are perceived.

A good friend of mine Masedi Molosiwa asked what my insights where on the process. Initially I responded that it was all about appropriate information chunk size.

Values are an abstraction of importance ("What are my criteria?", "Why is this important"), through which some very interesting games in our universe get played. It's values all the way up. How values get played out in organizations is incredibly interesting, and outside the scope of this post. Values will dictate that certain patterns of behviour get lived out. As with any system, the following structure holds true:

Systems Structure -> Pattern of Behaviour -> Events

The above structure gives us an inkling on how to measure the acting out of values.

1) [Events] What sensory specific actions will be displayed in order to ascertain that those values are being played out (What will I see, what will I hear?).
2) [Patterns of Behaviour] What events do I group together to show a pattern of behavior which describe the values

The output of the above will bring out questions, or patterns to rate in the 360. Difficulties I picked up in this process are:

1) Values mean different things to different people, and what some people may classify as one thing, may get displayed by others differently.
2) The shift from System Structure to Event needs a parity check, only by moving in and out of state (something I'll try and blog about soon), does one get a feel for which actions attach to values.
3) This is a personal disclaimer - You cannot force values through an organisation any more than you can force a belief through a family system. The measure and importance of a value system in an organisation needs to be carefully chunked all the way up to "Do we work together towards a common purpose."

Human systems are complicated things, and while checking an odometer of a car will let you know how fast you're going, it may not let you know if you are any closer to your destination. 360's are exceptionally powerful tools, and when used in isolation they will feedback only what the have been created to measure.