Oh gee what are they again? Those things the leaders talk about in their latest video blogs and that are now up on the wall… those company values!
Or are you able to recite them all and apply them to the purpose of your business and your role within it? Which in turn enables consistency within the organisation, and ensures clarity through changing times.
At Think Productive, we worked as a team to review what underpins what we do, what’s important to us and how these translate to our personal values. This is what we came up with:
- Psychology Before Technology
- Practical and Playful
- Human, Not Superhero
- We Walk Our Talk
- Trust and Kindness are our Rocketfuel
We’ve found that right now more than ever, our values and our mission are helping us to not get dragged into irrelevant topics, or risk compromising our identity or even leading us on a merry dance as the world starts to adjust to these changing times and start thinking about what the other side will look like.
These are the five ways your company values can help your organisation today:
Decision Making
Which decision best reflects your values? Maybe you are wondering what your marketing message should be? How you are best positioned to protect your “bottom line” or how your values can help you secure funding? Even decisions around what changes will emerge to your business/organisation post this period of uncertainty.
In times of chaos and uncertainty rash, shallow decisions will risk being made but your values are your grounding, to help you not be a victim to the momentum which risks driving you in all sorts of directions.
Wellbeing
If your teams are working remotely you could start your meetings or daily huddle with each individual applying a value to their mood that day. You could share some celebrations of how your values have been demonstrated in their work. We have a value “Human, Not Superhero”. So, if one of our team had to be offline to support their child’s home schooling our values help them make peace with that decision.
Communication
What message are you sharing with your customers at the moment? What’s their need? What do they want to hear from you? How can your values influence you to say and do the right thing? For us it is time to invest in our value “Trust and Kindness are our Rocketfuel”. We recognise that leaders are in a flurry of change, team members have been unleashed into the unknown of home working – we wanted to help them with our special 60 min webinars on ‘The Productivity Ninja’s Guide to Working From Home‘, and are delighted to have been able to help thousands of people already across the globe.
Strategy
I think is fair to assume that lots of businesses are going through the equivalent of a factory reset at the moment, whether that is driven through commercial needs, supply chain accessibility or technical limitations. So, these values – how are they going to help drive the direction of your organisation? If they don’t, are they the right values?
Any brave change in your organisation’s direction will involve losing legacy ways of working, these are often part of the DNA of the organisation. You cannot just implement a new system and expect it to work. This is where our value “Psychology Before Technology” comes to the fore. Do not expect things just to change. It takes effort.
You
That is you as a leader, a partner, an employee, a manager – whatever your role is. How connected are you with your company values? Are they driving your personal purpose? Are you engaged with the purpose of your organisation? What decisions do you need to make personally? For me, I have to be confident in what Think Productive stands for. In order for me to truly adhere to our value “We Walk Our Talk”, fortunately I am.
And if you want to take this further think about the vision and mission of your business. Our Vision here at Think Productive is “A world where work is full of purpose, clarity and focus (and where no one dreads Monday mornings)”. We are embracing this as we practice our agile ninja skills to be ready to meet the current and future needs of our clients.
And what about you, how will your organisation values support you and your teams?
Learn more about Leadership with our Leading Remote Teams webinar!
If you’re a Leader and you’re adjusting to life in a new remote-working world, we want to help. Check out the session overview for ‘Leading Remote Teams’ here.