Values Architecture.
The layer above goals.

Goals fail when they aren't anchored to anything underneath. A goal for the sake of the goal is theatre. A goal that traces back to a value — a thing you have explicitly chosen to organise your life around — has the weight to survive a hard month in the middle of the year. The Values Architecture is the layer that produces that weight.

This post is the deep-dive on the Values Architecture, the foundational document of the Coaching series. What it actually is — not motivational poster values, but operationalised commitments. The Acceptance and Commitment Therapy framework underneath it. How it sits at the top of the Cascade. And the four-hour exercise that produces it.

What "values" actually mean here

The word "values" is used loosely in motivational literature. Often it means "things you sort of care about" — family, health, integrity, growth. These work as slogans but not as planning anchors. Saying you value family doesn't help you decide between accepting a promotion that requires relocating and turning it down. The slogan is too abstract.

The Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) literature, developed by Steven Hayes and colleagues over the last three decades, defines values differently. A value, in the ACT sense, is a chosen direction of action — not a goal, not a feeling, but a way you want to behave consistently across contexts. "Being a present father" is an ACT-style value. "Doing work that pushes a craft forward" is another. Each one is a direction, not a destination — you can always be more in alignment with it, and you can never definitively achieve it.

This framing matters because it makes values operational. A value as a chosen direction of action can be used as a decision filter. Faced with the promotion-and-relocate choice: which option moves you in the direction of being a present father? Often the answer becomes obvious in a way the abstract version couldn't produce.

What the Values Architecture workbook contains

The Values Architecture is a 32-page workbook designed to be completed in one extended sitting (3-4 hours) once a year, with shorter quarterly revisits. The sections, in order:

1. The values inventory. A list of about 80 candidate values (family-presence, craft-mastery, financial-independence, etc.) from which you pick the ones that genuinely apply.
2. The narrowing. From the full list, narrow to ten. From ten, narrow to five. From five, narrow to three. The narrowing is the hardest part — it forces explicit choice between things you'd prefer to claim are all equally important.
3. The behavioural definitions. For each of the three remaining values, write a paragraph describing what acting in alignment with this value looks like. Specific behaviours, not abstract aspirations.
4. The recent-history audit. For each value, three examples from the last three months where you were in alignment with it, and three examples where you weren't. This produces honest data about whether the stated values match the lived ones.
5. The forward commitments. For each value, three behavioural commitments for the next 90 days that will move you further into alignment with it.

The output is one document of about 8-12 pages. It is the foundation document of your planning system — the layer that everything below it traces back to.

How it sits at the top of the Cascade

The Cascade flows downward through five layers:

• Values → three chosen directions of action (Values Architecture)
• Annual Blueprint → four domain outcomes for the year, traceable to the values
• 90-Day Goal Planner → three quarterly objectives drawn from the annual outcomes
• Weekly Review → three weekly intentions drawn from the quarterly objectives
• Daily Focus Sheet → three daily priorities drawn from the weekly intentions

The Values Architecture sits at the very top. Each layer below inherits from the one above. The result is that today's three priorities can be traced upward through weekly, quarterly, annual, all the way to a chosen value. Nothing in the daily layer floats. This is what makes the system different from motivational productivity content — the connection is built into the structure, not held in your head.

When to do it

Annually, ideally in the same weekend as the Annual Blueprint. The order matters: Values Architecture first, Annual Blueprint second. The annual outcomes you set should be traceable to the values you've just confirmed, not the other way around. Doing the Annual Blueprint first tends to produce outcomes shaped by current ambition; doing the Values Architecture first tends to produce outcomes shaped by chosen direction. The chosen-direction version survives the year better.

Quarterly revisits take about 30-45 minutes. You re-read the document, do a fresh recent-history audit for the last 90 days, and decide whether any of the values need refining. Most quarters require no changes. The point of the revisit is to ensure the document stays a living reference, not an annual artefact that gets filed away.

The honest next step

If you've never done explicit values work, block a Saturday morning. The Values Architecture is £5.99 standalone in any format. The complete Coaching series at £19.99 includes the Values Architecture alongside the Weekly Debrief, Accountability Framework, and GROW Session Planner. The complete Groundwork bundle at £54.99 includes the Coaching series alongside the rest of the 28-tool ecosystem.

The Groundwork OS at £19.99 holds the Values Architecture at the top of the cascade, where every layer below it inherits from it automatically.

Goals without values are theatre. Values without architecture are slogans. The combination is what produces a planning system whose foundation can survive a hard year.