Anyone who knows me can tell you that I’m an avid follower of all things to do with business development, especially as it relates to Asia / Australasia. It’s with this hat on that I recently decided to follow Gordon Orr, Chairman, Asia at McKinsey & Company, as an Influencer on LinkedIn.

One of Gordon’s more recent posts was titled “Team Building In China”. While I found Gordon’s  post interesting, what stopped me in my tracks was the reason behind Gordon’s post – his attendance at the Shanghai office “Values Day”.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve obviously heard of law firms having values – after all, nearly every law firm includes these on their website these days. But what I have never heard of before is of a law firm who holds its values so close to its core business strategy that it is willing to celebrate this in such a way (and if you are a law firm that does have a Values Day, please forgive me).

According to Gordon, McKinsey & Co.’s Values Day is:

“an annual event for everyone in the office (and in McKinsey offices worldwide) at which we celebrate and discuss our core values.”

Of course you could argue that any firm worth its salt would be doing this every day and wouldn’t need a special day to celebrate this – much like Valentine’s Day really. And you would be right.

But, in an era when many are proclaiming Peter Drucker’s “culture eats strategy for breaksfast” message, wouldn’t it be nice if more law firms (or, indeed, any) took a little time out to celebrate Values Day?

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PS – For those of you who think the idea of a Values Day is a good one, Gordon says that at the McKinsey day he attaended, they

“were given a values topic and asked to develop a scenario on stage in front of the entire group, where at first everything was done wrong, and then we repeated the scenario, but this time modeling best practice in living our values.”