Barrett Values
The Barrett model maps personal and organisational values onto seven levels of consciousness, from survival through to service, so you can see where energy is stuck and where a culture's stated values don't match its lived ones.
Seven bands stack upward, survival at the base and service at the peak, each layer a different pull on energy.
Reach for this when…
- The values on the wall don't match what people actually reward day to day.
- Leadership wants a culture survey that goes deeper than an engagement score.
- You need a shared, values-based language before a merger or restructure.
How to run it
- Administer the Cultural Transformation Tools survey - people select values describing current and desired culture, plus limiting values.
- Generate the values report, including the Cultural Entropy score.
- Calculate alignment, dysfunction and balance across the results.
- Share results with the leadership team.
- Identify the three to five highest-priority value shifts.
- Co-design culture change initiatives targeting those priorities.
A worked example
Situation. Bibek Shrestha led operations at a mid-sized bank in Kathmandu, Nepal, whose values statement talked about innovation while every promotion in a decade had gone to the safest, most risk-averse manager in the room.
Applied. The Cultural Transformation Tools survey put entropy high, and the gap between stated and lived values sat almost entirely around self-esteem and transformation, the levels concerned with status and change.
Result. The leadership team stopped rewarding caution and set up a small innovation fund, visible enough that staff noticed the mismatch was actually being addressed.
The catch
A single survey is a snapshot, and values language is easy to answer aspirationally rather than honestly, especially where speaking up carries career risk. The seven-level ladder also implies a hierarchy of value that doesn't always hold - a 'lower' level like financial stability isn't inferior, it's foundational, and treating it as something to progress past can backfire.
A high entropy score tells you something is wrong; it doesn't tell you who benefits from it staying that way.
Origin: Richard Barrett