David Allison spent 20 years in marketing before he started a research company, and he could describe a target customer in enormous detail: age, income, where they went on vacation, what car they drove.
“What I couldn’t tell you was what it would take to get that person to say yes, and that was the job I’d been hired to do,” says Allison, founder of the Valuegraphics Project—the first global inventory of core human values—and a best-selling author who has worked with clients including PayPal, Google, Amazon and the United Nations Foundation. “So, we built a database to answer that question. One million surveys, 180 countries, 152 languages, all of it identifying what matters most to people, which is another way of saying their values.”
During this one-of-a-kind keynote present at MPI’s theEVENT (Sept. 14-16 in Vancouver), Allison will reveal a data-driven portrait of the community before sharing practical tools from his new book, The Values Map, to help attendees lead with purpose, build resilience and reconnect with what matters most.
“What drives the people who bring the world together? Before theEVENT 2026, I will survey the meeting and event industry to uncover the values that define this profession,” he says. “Those who attend my keynote will leave with fresh insight into their profession, themselves and the values that fuel meaningful work.”
While his first two books were written for leaders who need to understand groups of people, after every keynote Allison he presented, the same question came up, in the hallway or in an email a few days later: “How do I know what my own values are?”
“Nothing I’d written answered it. The Values Map is the answer. It takes the same research and points it at one person, the reader,” he says. “One thing I learned writing it is that being aligned with your values often feels like the absence of things. The values-driven decision is obvious, and you don’t lie awake rehashing it. A values-aligned event doesn’t mentally and emotionally exhaust you. You might come home tired but not depleted.”
When you meet someone whose values are aligned with yours, you just naturally fall into a friendship, according to Allison.
“And since nobody gives a TED Talk called ‘A List of Things You Will Not Feel,’ most of us have had this feeling hundreds of times and never really identified it for what it is,” he says. “It’s not always this way, of course. There are other signals to tell you when you are moving in a values-driven direction, but this one is more common than anyone would think.”
For those looking for a simple, practical step toward identifying their values and applying them immediately, Allison recommends the “Lifeguard Test.”
“Imagine you’ve won the lottery and never need a paycheck again, with one rule attached: You still have to leave the house and do something useful eight hours a day, five days a week. What would you do?” he says. “The first answer is usually the fantasy. Lifeguard on the beach at Ipanema, for example, and that’s why we call this the Lifeguard Test. But of course, there are variations on the theme. It might be a fantasy about owning a little bookshop in a coastal town in Portugal. Or starting a new not-for-profit that works to better the lives of animals in distress.”
Next, Allison says, take the second step and picture the actual days, which for the lifeguard include hours of scanning the same patch of water, paperwork, shift politics, sunburn and a boss who can ruin your morning on a whim.
“Sand flies! Drunk tourists! Given all that, would you still want it?” he says. “Keep going until you land on an answer that’s still yes after you’ve added the bad parts.”
Once you’ve identified that thing you would do regardless of how tough it really is, Allison says, look at which of the 56 values that occupation lines up with.
“If your answer is teaching, you might be high on Education, Personal Growth or Service to Others,” he says. “If it’s running a small business with a tight team, it might be Community or Personal Responsibility.”
Allison also recommends looking at your current job through the lens of the Lifeguard Test.
“Find the tasks in it that line up with those same values,” he says. “Angle yourself toward more of them. You may never be the lifeguard at Ipanema, but the closer your paying job sits to those values, the better it feels every morning when the day begins.”
