We’ve all seen company values mounted with pride on the walls of our offices - but its’ what we do with them that matters.
Our core values have to be real… they are the guiding principles for our business and influence our culture. We should choose and review these carefully and use them to guide us through the hiring, people managing and reward process to ensure we have the right people in the right seats in our business.
When our values are clear to everyone inside and outside the business, we will inevitably attract like-minded people to our organisations and possibly identify people who simply don’t fit.
We recently embarked on the process of reviewing our values which have been relevant and in place for a number of years. Hewett’s have big plans for growth over the years ahead and have adopted the principles and tools from a great resource called ‘Traction’ by Gino Wickman. With the traction tools in place we believe we are ready to achieve faster growth, increased profitability and attract great people that we enjoy working with – its really not complicated and I recommend it as an excellent model to adopt when preparing your business for growth.
When we look at a list of three people in our business that we’d like to clone, it’s worth looking at the characteristics these people embody. What are the qualities they exemplify? What do they do that puts them on the list? It’s important that the team get to participate in this process.
Once the long list has been created, it needs to be edited down to identify which characteristics are truly important. Somehow it needs to be whittled down to 7 or less.
There was much discussion and debate and a few tough decisions deciding which values belong and are truly core and are the essence of what we are about. We kept some of our existing values which were still relevant, but updated a few that reflected the current growth shape and culture of the business.
Each core value then needs to be backed up with illustrations and explanations of what they mean to our business and everyone within the organisation.
Our team are proud of what we represent, our chosen values are to act with integrity, create value, never stop learning, have grit and love what we do. I certainly love the way the process has fired up the team and excited the marketing department!
Values are just part of the story. If you want to grow your business and need a tool to guide you through with really practical, easy to understand systems to enhance the way you run your business. Don’t overthink it – grab a copy of traction – it might just make all the difference.
