In a recent session with one of our client organisations there was a comment about values, ‘they ain’t what they used to be’, I was already in the midst of planning a values inquiry and it stimulated thoughts about values over time. So I went back and did a bit more research to see how values had really changed. If you doubt if there’s anything to learn from history – skip this one!
There was a time when values were not something we chose. They were simply there, woven into the fabric of the world. In ancient societies, to speak of ‘values’ as I hear people do now would have made little sense. Instead, there was a shared concern around ‘what does it mean to live well?’. Philosophers spoke of virtues – courage, justice, wisdom – not as personal preferences, but as qualities rooted in the nature of reality itself. To live a good life was to align oneself with something larger: the order of the cosmos, the harmony of the polis, the balance of relationships.
Values, it seems, though not named as such, were understood as discovered truths.
Later, in the medieval world, this sense of alignment deepened into devotion. What mattered was not just living well but living rightly in the eyes of God. Moral life was anchored in divine order. Values were no longer simply philosophical – they were sacred. To question them was not just to disagree, but to risk disconnection from ultimate meaning.
Then something began to shift.
As the modern world emerged, the word ‘value’ took on a new life – not in ethics, but in economics. It came to describe what things were worth. Goods, labour, exchange. Value became measurable, comparable, tradable. It was in this shift that something subtle but profound appears to have happened: the language of meaning began to merge with the language of markets.
And from there, it just kept moving.
By the 19th century, long-held moral frameworks were being questioned. Thinkers began to ask whether values were truly universal, or whether they were shaped by culture, history, and power. What one society held sacred, another might reject. What one era called ‘good’, another might call oppressive. Values were no longer fixed – they were contingent, contested, alive.
In the 20th century, the shift turned inward. Psychologists began to describe values as internal beliefs – guiding principles that shape our choices and behaviours. Something we hold, rather than something that holds us. Surveys could map them. Organisations could list them. Individuals could articulate them.
And so we arrive where we are today.
Values are everywhere.
They appear on office walls, in strategy documents, in personal mission statements. We are encouraged to ‘know our values’, to ‘live our values’, to ‘lead with our values’. And yet, for all this language, something often feels thin. I am not writing this from some objective distant place, I have been a player in values work for decades. I have felt the changes in what values mean and have been a contributor to helping organisations shape their values and question, challenge and encourage people and organisations to embrace them wholeheartedly for effective decision-making and integrity.
I’ve seen values move from being lived realities to declared intentions.
From something discovered … to something decided.
From something collective … to something individualised.
From something embodied … to something declared.
And this is where the question of meaning returns – perhaps more urgently than ever.
In a world of multiple perspectives, rapid change, and deep uncertainty, there is no longer a single, agreed foundation for what matters. I can’t simply inherit values in the way my parents and grandparents did. Nor can I rely on statements alone to guide me.
Everywhere I look, both individually, and collectively, there is a tussle for the ongoing work of making meaning. Not as an abstract exercise, but as a lived practice.
At the most visceral, amidst the moments when I feel I am face to face with working out what’s important, that when the values questions hit me…
What do I stand for, when it costs me something?
What do I prioritise, when tensions arise?
How do I act, when there is no clear right answer?
These are not questions that can be answered once and for all. They are questions I return to, again and again, in the midst of real situations, real relationships, real pressures.
At Oasis, this is what draws our attention.
Not the articulation of values as words, but the realisation of values in practice.
Because arguably the challenge of this time is not a lack of stated values, it is the gap between what is said and what is lived.
I have see this in organisations I have worked with where values are carefully crafted but rarely felt. In leadership where intention and impact drift apart. In systems where what is rewarded quietly contradicts what stated. And yet, I feel privileged to also see something else. I see individuals and groups willing to stay with the discomfort of not knowing. To question legacy assumptions without discarding the need for shared ground. To experiment, reflect, and learn in real time. To bring values into the room, not as slogans, but as lived commitments.
This work is not neat.
It asks for honesty, for courage, for attention to the small, everyday moments where values are either enacted or eroded. It asks us to notice not just what we say matters, but what our actions repeatedly make true.
In this sense, values are not static objects we possess.
They are patterns we participate in.
They are shaped in conversation, tested in tension, and revealed in practice.
And perhaps this is the quiet invitation of our time:
Not to return to a world where values are fixed and unquestioned,
Nor to settle for a world where values are endlessly fluid and ungrounded,
But to engage, together, in the ongoing work of making them real.
Again and again.
It is these organisations and the people within them who live these messy questions that I love working with.
Nick Ellerby
