In my experience as an organization leader one of the most important tools in my toolbox has always been my personal values. It's been my experience that even when data points in one direction, and best practices say you should approach the problem in this way, it's always been my values that help me make the best decisions as an individual. And the truth is, there are very rarely any decisions that are 100% clear cut. In almost every decision, some amount of judegment is required. 

That's why I believe so strongly in defining values for the organizations I work for. When everyone is working from a shared sense of values, we're making decisions - even big giant judgement calls - from the same perspective. To that end, we spent some time this year working with the board and staff to develop a values statement for the Drupal Association.

We started in a board retreat, brainstorming the implicit (though not documented) values of the Association and the larger Drupal Community. The board ranked their favorites, and then we created a committee of board and staff to draft some language. Those initial values statements were vetted by both the entire Association staff and the full board, and then additional edits were made. Here's the result of that process:

The Drupal Association shares the values of our community, our staff, and open source projects:

  • TEAMWORK: We add value to the Drupal community by helping each other solve problems to create quality human and digital experiences.
  • COMMUNICATION: We value communication. We seek community participation. We are open and transparent.
  • ACTION: We act decisively and proactively, embracing what we learn from both our successes and our mistakes.
  • RESPECT: We respect and value inclusivity in our global community and strive to recognize, understand, and respond to its needs.
  • FUN: We create environments that embrace humor resulting in fun, positive, supportive and safe interactions.

To be clear, these are the values we're defining for our staff. We're not trying to impose these values on the larger community. However, we do hope they reflect the values you feel are important in the larger Drupal community as well. We also want to recognize that writing down the words is one thing, and living up to them is something else. We intend to live these values in all our work. 

Now it's your turn. The values are set by the board and staff, but we want to make sure we know what you think.

Flickr photo: Howard Lake

Comments

dasjo’s picture

hi holly,

the main reason why i'm still around with drupal since starting in 2008 isn't its flexibility, extensibility or any shiny features. those are all great, but what really matters to me as a human in tech is the community based on great teamwork, communication where we act respectful and ... have fun :)

so thanks for putting this together, i really like what i read.

in addition, from my personal perspective i want us to be professional. in order to stay competitive, we need to retain a slick experience. that maybe sometimes tricky, especially when we value diversity, openness very high (which i think is a priority). but for example, the "core values" picture that you chose for this article feels a bit too playful to me and isn't really my taste of design. we'll as long as we share the same values, i think we can cope with those minor differences :)

keep it up,

best dasjo / josef

holly.ross.drupal’s picture

I definitely appreciate the words of encouragement. I guess you caught on to the fact that I am not a designer! But I agree with you - we're working hard on professionalizing while keeping our community spirit It's a tough balance, but that's why our values are there. We won't do anything just because it's slick - we'll do it because it's slick AND it reflects our values.

TheoRichel’s picture

The usefulness of the above completely escapes me. I have several Drupal problems that I cannot solve. If for instance a humorless, solitary racist would offer a solution to my problems than what? Drupal was developed by Dries Buytaert, in reality possibly by 'Team Buytaert', but that is not what it says on the bottom of the pages.. So what is the use of this? I am a bit concerned, I mean Drupal remains a piece of software I hope and will not become a religion. If as you apparently do feel the need to use these very general terms ('teamwork', 'communication' etc) than at least indicate some borders.