One of the foundational activities the ProActive Leadership coaches go through with our Strategic Excellence clients is to identify the company's core values. Companies are sometimes challenged in that it is tempting to identify aspirational values, the way they would like the business to be. Core values, though, are already in the company and identifiable in the behavior of people who work there. They are the things over which you as the CEO would be willing to fire a person, or take a financial hit . The goal of defining core values is not just to write them down; it is bringing values to life in your business.
The past few months have been tests of values in companies. If the business says it considers its team its most valuable resource, what does it do when it has to close as nonessential? Does the business create remote work opportunities? Does it keep people on staff so they maintain health insurance and other benefits? Does the business take the opportunity to free itself of what it considers to be dead weight? How does it handle the reopening process, when some people are frightened to come to work, or have children at home that they cannot leave because school is not in session?
How does the business treat its vendors in times of financial distress? Does it cut bait as soon as possible to manage financial risk? Does the business slow down its payments?
Core values aren't established during times of crisis - they are revealed. When you have to make quick decisions and don't have a lot of time for analysis, you decide based upon your core beliefs of what's important and what's not. Your core values are on display in your choices.
As life returns to normal, whatever that looks like now, how will you bring your values to life? How will you choose to be more intentional, to embody the values that you have said you believe in?
A number of companies have gone public with messages of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement during the past days of widespread unrest. Are these real expressions of core values, or aspirational? To aspire to be better and do better is not a bad thing in itself. But we will know by what companies choose to DO, and keep doing, to manifest their values in policies and actions.
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