What's The Value of Your Values?

When you establish values for your company--what's the real value?

I've been fortunate enough to have happend upon Jim Collins' methods for establishing values within a company--and have had the chance to do it twice within two different organizations.

In short, Collins suggests that instead of the executive team sitting down and picking out the 4-5 values THEY believe are important--that instead--they study the best employees in the company, identify the values those employees demonstrate, and where those values overlap--make them the company's own.

What you end up with is a set of values that defines the very best people within your organization. You may then use these values to emphasize behaviors, evaluate performance, and also use them to recruit and bring aboard new employees into the company.

You now have a set of values that really mean something. They not only describe your company--but they ARE your company.

And that's where the real "value of the values" comes into play.

When facing decisions, these values serve an imporant purpose. These values become the filter through which your evaluate choices and they help chart your course very cearly and plainly.

These values--that have been developed from a set of the best characteristics displayed by your very best employees--now have real meaning. This, as opposed to the meaning derived from a set of 5 "classic" values that the management team thought were important and had printed on posters around the office.

Not that you shouldn't print and post them--but wouldn't it be better if they resonated with your employees?

Follow Collins' process and you'll wind up with the best set of values possible--which will help guide you in every way you can imagine.