Company values are increasingly recognized as the bedrock of organizational culture, serving as a pivotal instrument in everything from shaping employer brand and attracting top talent to identifying high-potential future leaders and guiding strategic decisions. However, the traditional approach to defining and disseminating these core principles has often been a top-down mandate, a method that foundational nutrition company Kate Farms deliberately chose to eschew three years ago when embarking on a mission to redefine its corporate values. This strategic shift towards a co-creation model has not only revitalized its internal culture but has also provided a robust framework for navigating significant organizational changes, including its recent integration with Danone and partnership with Nutricia in Medical Nutrition.
The Evolving Landscape of Corporate Culture and the Need for Reimagination
In today’s dynamic business environment, marked by accelerated digital transformation, global expansion, and the rise of remote-first work models, the foundational elements of corporate identity are under constant scrutiny. For many organizations, rapid growth, while indicative of success, can simultaneously dilute original cultural tenets and render legacy values obsolete. This was precisely the challenge confronting Kate Farms. The company had experienced exponential growth, evolving from a nascent startup to a significant player in the specialized nutrition sector. Concurrently, it transitioned to a remote-first operational model, scattering its workforce across diverse geographic locations throughout the country.
Julia Slee, Head of People and Culture at Kate Farms, articulated the imperative for change. "The values had originally been created by the founders and reflected the company at an earlier stage of its journey," Slee explained. "As we looked at who we had become and where we were headed, we wanted to ensure our values reflected the lived experience of today’s Kate Farmers, not just our history." This sentiment underscores a critical shift in modern HR philosophy: that authentic company values must resonate with the contemporary workforce, rather than merely serving as historical artifacts. Studies consistently show that organizations with clearly defined and lived values experience higher employee engagement, lower turnover rates, and superior financial performance. However, these benefits are contingent upon the values being genuinely embraced and understood by all employees, a feat rarely achieved through mere executive pronouncements.
A Deep Dive into the Co-Creation Methodology: Building Values from the Ground Up
Recognizing the limitations of a unilateral approach, Kate Farms committed to a process of "co-creation" from the outset. This wasn’t merely about soliciting feedback; it was about empowering employees to become architects of their shared future. The initiative commenced with a comprehensive companywide survey designed to gauge employee sentiment regarding the existing values. The feedback was unequivocal: while the core value of "People with Heart" resonated deeply and employees wished to retain it, there was an overwhelming desire to "refresh" the broader set of values to better reflect the company’s current identity and aspirations.
The subsequent phase of the process proved to be one of the most inspiring and validating moments for Slee and the leadership team. "What happened next was one of the most inspiring parts of the process," Slee recounted, highlighting the "extraordinary number of employees" who enthusiastically volunteered to participate in the value redefinition. This level of intrinsic motivation and proactive engagement from the workforce was a powerful affirmation of the co-creation philosophy. "People genuinely wanted a seat at the table," Slee observed. "That level of enthusiasm reinforced our belief that culture is most powerful when it’s not simply communicated to employees, but created with them." This principle aligns with contemporary organizational psychology, which posits that participation in decision-making fosters a sense of ownership, trust, and psychological safety, all crucial elements for a thriving workplace culture.
Chronology of Engagement and Leadership’s Evolving Role
The co-creation journey at Kate Farms unfolded in a structured yet highly collaborative manner:
- Initial Assessment (Q4 2021): Launch of a company-wide survey to gather initial feedback on existing values and identify key themes for potential refresh. This phase aimed to quantify employee sentiment and pinpoint areas of alignment and divergence.
- Call for Volunteers (Q1 2022): An open invitation extended to all employees to participate in working groups and focus groups. The enthusiastic response far exceeded expectations, demonstrating a strong desire for agency in cultural definition.
- Working Group and Focus Group Sessions (Q2-Q3 2022): Multiple sessions were held, bringing together diverse employees from various departments, levels, and geographic locations. These sessions involved extensive brainstorming, facilitated discussions, and collaborative exercises designed to distill core tenets that genuinely reflected the "lived experience" of Kate Farmers. Topics included identifying desired behaviors, aspirational characteristics, and the foundational principles that should guide daily work and interactions.
- Leadership Integration and "Pressure-Testing" (Q3-Q4 2022): While employees were actively shaping the language and concepts, leaders across the organization played a crucial, distinct role. They participated in "intentional checkpoints," engaging in focused conversations to "pressure-test" employee feedback. This wasn’t about overriding employee input but about ensuring authenticity, relevancy, and alignment with the organization’s strategic vision and future trajectory. "The role of leadership was not to dictate the outcome, but to participate alongside employees in shaping it," Slee emphasized. This iterative process of bottom-up generation and top-down validation ensured that the values were both grassroots-authentic and strategically sound.
- Refinement and Finalization (Q1 2023): The insights from working groups, focus groups, and leadership discussions were synthesized into a refined set of value statements. This phase involved careful crafting of language to ensure clarity, conciseness, and resonance.
This multi-stage process stands in stark contrast to traditional methods where leadership, often with HR, drafts values in isolation and then disseminates them. By involving employees at every stage, from initial feedback to conceptual development and refinement, Kate Farms ensured that the final values were not merely communicated to the workforce but were organically owned by the workforce. "Employees weren’t asked to simply review language that had already been written," Slee highlighted. "They helped identify what should stay, what should evolve and what values best reflected who Kate Farms had become." This deep involvement meant that when the new value set was eventually unveiled, employees could genuinely "see their fingerprints" on it, fostering a profound sense of ownership and credibility that is exceedingly difficult to cultivate through a purely feedback-driven or directive approach.
The Power of Presentation: Unveiling Values with Authenticity
The spirit of co-creation extended beyond the development phase into the very act of introducing the new values to the entire organization. Instead of a conventional executive announcement, Kate Farms opted for a deeply personal and authentic unveiling at its 2024 Camp Kate Farms, a semi-annual all-company gathering. On stage, it wasn’t the senior leadership team who presented the values; it was the employees who had been intimately involved in the co-creation project. Each volunteer shared a personal story illustrating what a specific value meant to them in their daily work and personal connection to the company.
The newly defined values, now officially integrated into Kate Farms’ organizational fabric, are:
- People with Heart: Reinforcing the foundational value that resonated most strongly with employees.
- Think Big: Encouraging innovation, ambition, and forward-thinking.
- Work with Purpose: Emphasizing meaningful contributions and a shared mission.
- Make Each Other Better: Fostering collaboration, mutual support, and continuous improvement.
- Deliver Results: Highlighting accountability and performance excellence.
The energy in the room during this unveiling was palpable, Slee recalled. "People weren’t simply being introduced to a new set of values; they were seeing their colleagues, friends and teammates tell authentic stories about the culture they had helped create," she described. "For me, that was a defining moment because it demonstrated that the values belonged to the organization, not to leadership or HR." This method of presentation not only amplified the message but also solidified the collective ownership, transforming a formal announcement into a shared celebration of collective identity. Research by Gallup and other organizational development firms consistently indicates that emotional connection to company values, often forged through personal narratives and peer influence, is far more impactful than mere cognitive understanding, leading to higher rates of internalization and behavioral alignment.
Broader Impact and Strategic Implications: A Blueprint for Integration
The strategic foresight of Kate Farms’ co-created values initiative is now proving indispensable as the company embarks on a significant new chapter: its integration with Danone and the partnership with Nutricia in Medical Nutrition. Mergers, acquisitions, and strategic partnerships are notoriously challenging, with cultural misalignment frequently cited as a primary reason for failure. A study by KPMG, for instance, found that 83% of mergers fail to create shareholder value, with cultural incompatibility being a leading factor. In this context, Kate Farms’ experience with co-creation offers a powerful blueprint.
Recognizing the critical importance of cultural cohesion in this new alliance, Kate Farms has launched a fresh company culture initiative aptly named "Our Culture, Co-Created." This project aims to engage employees from both Kate Farms and the newly combined entity in defining cultural principles for the integrated organization. Similar to the values project, it will involve extensive employee listening sessions and surveys to determine what cultural elements employees wish to retain from their respective heritages and what new aspects need to evolve to forge a unified, effective culture for the combined entity.
Julia Slee underscored the lessons learned from the values journey as paramount for this new challenge. When organizations integrate, the natural inclination for HR and leadership is to prioritize the merging of processes and structures. While these operational aspects are undeniably crucial, Slee contends that a co-created culture is equally, if not more, vital for long-term success. "What we’ve learned from our values journey is that culture isn’t something leadership can simply announce," she stated. "The strongest cultures are built with employees, not for employees." This philosophy is particularly pertinent in the context of M&A, where fostering a sense of shared identity and purpose among employees from different organizational backgrounds can significantly mitigate resistance, accelerate integration, and unlock the full potential of the combined entity. By involving employees directly in shaping the new cultural landscape, Kate Farms aims to proactively address potential cultural friction, build trust, and lay a solid foundation for a cohesive and high-performing integrated organization. This proactive and inclusive approach to cultural integration positions Kate Farms not just as a leader in nutrition but also as a trailblazer in progressive organizational development.
