Many people talk about what is important for them when they do business; our businesses are often an expression of who we are and what we believe in. We will often choose to buy, or not buy, from a business just on the basis of how they operate.
What drives this behaviour?
Often, it is the expression of values: core principles that an individual holds to be of truth and importance to them. Within a business context, it is what your business stands for as important and special.
Values are often known in the minds of a business owner – they know what they want their business to stand for – but often it is not committed to paper. This can pose problems: if you haven’t written them anywhere, how does your team know what the guiding principles of the business are?
Values can determine how we recruit, how we retain, how we deliver, and what we are prepared to accept in our dealings with the market; if your team and the wider market don’t know what you stand for, they can’t possibly know how to engage with you on a consistent basis.
Without knowing what your values are, your team may struggle to understand the decisions you make. Clearly communicating your values alongside your vision and mission is part of the process of providing direction for your company.
What micro-task can you do now to get this on track? I’d recommend that you ask yourself this key question:
‘What do I want the business to be known for?’
Write as much as you can, be fulsome in your statements, and use lots of feelings and descriptive words. When you are able to write an answer to this, look closely at the words: what words stand out for you? What is this statement telling you? You will find quite quickly that values begin to stick out from the page – this is a good place to start the process of values-creation.
Then take the time to share it with your team in a meeting, let them know that this is your answer, and that you would like to hear their answers. Give them some time to do this activity as well and allow them to present their answers back to the group. From this, you should be able to start picking out common values. When you think you have half a dozen values, commit them to paper and this will form the start of your values statement.
There are further activities that can be done to really create powerful value statements that all your stakeholders can buy in to, but this should provide a useful starting point.
Enjoy the activity and let me know how you get on.
As always, I’d love to hear from you and I am keen to tackle any business questions you have, so get in touch with me via seanpurcell@actioncoach.com
