What's at your Core?
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This slideshare is about core values and defining what you and your business really stand for. It is fundamental to gaining focus and ultimately control over your business – and creating a successful business. It is the first step in creating a powerful vision for your business and the next four shares by Kevin will enable you to complete your vision
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What's at your Core?
- 1. Core Ideology •Core Values •Core Purpose Envisioned Future •Vivid Description •Stretch Goal
- 4. Core Values Exercise – 60 min Use Post Its – up to 15 Individually 10-15 Values
- 6. Core Values Exercise – Pt1. Use Post Its – up to 15 Individually 10-15 Values •Fundamental Behaviours
- 7. • What does your organisation stand for? • What do you want to be known for? • What do clients say about you? • What are you passionate about • What kind of behaviours do you hate?!
- 9. Work as a group to hone these down to 3-5 And then tease out what they really mean
- 10. • ‘what do we really mean by this?’ • ‘How do we live this?’ • ‘How does this apply to each of our roles?’
- 12. • Practical support • Helping business owners create scale & value • Peer group collaboration • Measurable Impact • Accountability • Insight and Clarity
- 14. • Hiring • HR Management • Communications • Execution
Editor's Notes
- This tutorial is about core values and defining what you and your business really stand for. It is fundamental to gaining focus and ultimately control over your business – and creating a successful business. It is the first step in creating a powerful vision for your business and the next four tutorials will enable us to complete our vision As defined by Jim Collins, A powerful vision is made up of our core ideology and our envisioned future - representing what we fundamentally believe in and where we are headed. Core Ideology is the kind of ‘forever’ stuff – your culture and Envisioned Future is our mid to long term aspiration. We are going to start with Core Values and then come to Core Purpose. Together these make up what he calls your ‘Core Ideology’.
- You may be tempted to skip this step in the mistaken belief that you need to get to something more tangible – don’t. If someone had come to me in my early days of business and said “Kevin, let’s go and do an exercise on core values” I would have told them, politely of course, that “I was too busy with getting the work done/ the day job to talk about that kind of stuff” However, the longer I’ve been in business and the more businesses we have worked with, it is clear that those with a strong sense of core values and core purpose are the ones that succeed over time and go further than the others. It is not that surprising when you think about it – think of people you know (not necessarily in business) and I am sure that there are a few that come to mind that you would say are driven – that have strong values/ standards and have a real sense of direction. Equally you will know some that aren’t. Which ones achieve success or seem to make things happen?
- However, it is no good paying lip service to core values – we have to do them properly in the first place and then we have to make sure that the business lives these core values – and I’ll look at ways to do this later in this tutorial. You will have heard of and seen businesses that have mission statements and value statements on the walls in reception. This is ok and part of making core values work is the communication making sure everyone is aware of them. But it is more than that – we need everyone to buy in the core values and to incorporate them in how they work day to day.
- So here’s a great exercise to do with your core team if you have one – or with that trusted friend or colleague I referred to in the intro if you don’t have a team. Combine it with the exercise on core purpose and give yourself a couple of hours – one hour on core values and one on core purpose. You’ll need some post it pads and some flip chart paper. Core Values – 60 min Give everyone up to 15 post-its. Ask everyone including yourself to write down 10- 15 core values – one per post-it – including yourself! This should be done individually without referral and you should allow 5-10minutes.
- What we are looking for is a behaviour or something we think as a business that we stand for or that is fundamental to the way we do business and the kind of relationship that we have with our clients. What are we known for/ think we should be known for?. We are looking for a handful of core values that define the business’ culture and personality – and help everyone in the business to test ‘Should/ Shouldn’t’ for all behaviours. I’ve included a sheet in the resources of possible core values but it is generally preferable to start from scratch. So it could be that you ‘treat all customers and staff with respect/ as you would wish to be treated yourself’ etc. This is not necessarily about differentiation but if there are things that you do that are different from you competitors then they should come out here. Some of these behaviours will be to do with customers, some with staff – many with both.
- What we are looking for is a behaviour or something we think as a business that we stand for or that is fundamental to the way we do business and the kind of relationship that we have with our clients. What are we known for/ think we should be known for?. We are looking for a handful of core values that define the business’ culture and personality – and help everyone in the business to test ‘Should/ Shouldn’t’ for all behaviours. I’ve included a sheet in the resources of possible core values but it is generally preferable to start from scratch. So it could be that you ‘treat all customers and staff with respect/ as you would wish to be treated yourself’ etc. This is not necessarily about differentiation but if there are things that you do that are different from you competitors then they should come out here. Some of these behaviours will be to do with customers, some with staff – many with both.
- The following questions may help: What does your organisation stand for? What do you want to be known for? What do clients say about you/ what do you want them to say about you? What are you passionate about What kind of behaviours do you hate?! The values can be a short phrase – they don’t have to be one-worders and ideally describe behaviours. The important thing is to define what each means to give it a level of richness.
- When everyone is finished go around the table and ask each in turn to stick up a core value on the wall and briefly explain what they mean by it. If one seems to be similar to another then start to put them in clusters. Don’t engage in debate at this point. This will take a few minutes depending on how many are in your team.
- When you’ve done this, the next stage is to work as a group to hone these values down into between 3 and 5 (ideally) that we think are the overriding and most applicable ones. This may take several minutes and try to keep note of the some of the key points/ arguments for why a value is important. It is likely that the post-its naturally group into a handful of groups – watch out for a few outliers though as these could be really important. Try to articulate succinctly the name of the value/ behaviour heading that covers the sub behaviours within it.
- Use a flip chart to write down the core values and what they mean to the team – this second part will be at least partly covered by the different words people have used to describe the value but you should ask questions such as: ‘what do we really mean by this?’ ‘How do we live this?’ ‘How does this apply to each of our roles?’
- Now you have these, the final step on core values is to test them. Jim Collins has some great questions to do this and ensure that they really are strong core values – so ask the team the following and if we can’t answer in the affirmative then we need to re-think the value: Then test each core value against the following criteria! If you were to start a new organisation, would you build it around this core value regardless of the industry? Would you want your organisation to continue to stand for this core value 100 years into the future no matter what changes occur in the outside world? Would you want your organisation to hold this core value, even if at some point in time it becomes a competitive disadvantage – even if in some instances the environment penalised the organisation for living this core value? Do you believe that those who do not share this core value – those who breach it consistently – simply do not belong in your organisation? Would you personally continue to hold this core value even if you were not rewarded for holding it? Would you change jobs before giving up this core value? If you awoke tomorrow with more than enough money to retire comfortably for the rest of your life, would you continue to apply this core value to your productive activities? These questions are available in the resources linked to this tutorial
- Now you should have a really strong set of core values. Document these – for now just typing them up in a word document will be fine – but keep the flip charts because we will want to refer back to these during subsequent exercises. Here’s the BizSmart core values (without the full descriptions!) Practical support Helping business owners create scale & value Peer group collaboration Measurable Impact Accountability Insight and Clarity
- Something for you and the team to think about is how we make sure we live these values moving forward – and here are some ideas that you should consider ongoing with your team if you have one. In order to ensure that your business lives these values and that they really become and remain your culture, you as the leader must go beyond posting them on the wall in reception. You have to make sure that all of your systems are aligned to the core values.
- So here are 4 key ways to reinforce your values throughout your business Hiring Recruitment a Selection Onboarding Process HR Management Appraisals and Handbooks Recognition and rewards Communications Newsletters Execution Quarterly Themes Employee/ individual roles/ everyday reinforcement
- So we’ve reached the end of the first main tutorial. As I said before, don’t think this ‘soft’ stuff doesn’t matter. Got right this a foundational piece to setting strategy and using it to drive the business forward makes great business sense as well as creating a great place to work. Next up is the second part of Core Ideology – your core purpose!