I believe I have the best Core Values for my company…. Sure, I ran it through Watson, Amazon Echo and even Sunway TaihuLight gave me the GreenLight to pontificate on…
I hear your chortle. Ok, I’ll admit, I struggled with the Core Values thing and dismiss them for words on the wall. Are they truly aligned with what is happening in the Gemba* of the business? Maybe I don’t get it? Perhaps my simple mind cannot comprehend the hours of boardroom meetings that went into crafting such simple and performance inspiring words that make me jump out of bed each day.
I read blogs of the best business leaders, watched YouTube videos of the other best business leaders to get to the crux of the dissonance.
I continued to read, continued to ponder… we are all our own individuals. We start as the same naked babies with the same level of learning and acquiring experiences. These experiences define us and take us in many directions. The number of variables in play in the world creates an almost infinite number of paths for our development. Your journey goes in directions that my journey may not cross. Given that, we as humans, create visionary words that we hope will inspire others to our cause. A company is a cause, providing value for other humans.
As Stephen Covey writes in his book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, Put First Things First. I put myself at pause… what are my core values?
Taking the CUE(s) from Mr. Covey’s book. I would like to present the core values for a company I would run:
CUES
C – Continuous Improvement: The world and markets are always changing. Competition is real. Standing around is a losing mentality. The only way is forward.
U – Understand the Value: Companies exist to provide value to customers. All decisions made by the company, all work done by the company should be with the intent to maximize value for the customers.
E – Exercise Empathy: Understand those around you who are working alongside you to create value for the customer. We may have differences. We may take actions, but forget that there might be an impact to our colleagues along the way. Take the time to understand everyone else in your ecosystem. Listen, without judging. Challenge yourself to listen for twice the amount that you speak.
S – Ship It!: Don’t wait for perfection. The market will not wait for the perfect widget to come out of your factory or the perfect code to be built into your application. Err on the side of releasing a usable product sooner so your customers can let you know if you are on the right track.
Have you taken the time to determine your core values before marching in step with another’s values?
*The Gemba is the place in your business where people are doing the real value creation work. See: “How to go to the Gemba”
