A value is a belief, a mission, or a philosophy that is
really meaningful to the company. An example of a business value is: "Customer
Satisfaction." Another example of a value is "Being Ethical and Truthful."
Every company has one or more values, whether they are consciously aware of it or not.
Another way of saying it is that a value is a statement of the company's intention and
commitment to achieve a high level of performance on a specific QUALITATIVE factor.
In many recent business management books
and journals, developing, adopting, and implementing values has been identified as perhaps
the single key in the success of many high growth, high profit companies. A passion for a
value and its implementation into the daily activities of work was identified by many as
the single key to their business success.
For example, Merck, the pharmaceutical
company became so successful in its field because the company was so dedicated to the
value of "high quality and purity of its drug products". Because of this
perceived value, distributors felt secure carrying Merck products, and felt confident
recommending the products to their customers.
If we examine most companies,
we will find a particular value propelled it to success.
Here are some examples:
-- Sears's commitment to customer trust (any product could be returned with a
money back guarantee from rural areas in the 19th century). -- Apple Computer's and its belief in the values
of ease of use and service to society (Apple created the Macintosh
computer to end people's fear of the computer).
-- Marriott's values of systemization and standardization (which
enabled it to seamlessly duplicate its standard model hotel hundreds of
times across the country).
What a Value Consists
of
When defining a value for your company, it's a good idea to try to describe it in
detail. For example, a company may adopt the value "Customer Delight."
That's the value's name. The description for the value could be something like: "We
recognize that in today’s highly competitive market providing excellent service is
not sufficient to satisfy customers and ensure their loyalty. Our goal is to convert the
customer’s interaction with our company into a thoroughly and unforgettably enjoyable
experience." You are describing how the value can uplift a company in general, or
your company in particular.
Which Values Should
We Use? Here's a list
of values that we have found particularly powerful among the many
companies we have researched:
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT The desire and ability of the company to develop and
incorporate ways to improve itself.
CUSTOMER DELIGHT
The positive emotional response and joy
that the customer feels from interaction with the company's people and
products and services.
The
most successful businesses have discovered a formula that goes beyond
product and service. Their business is providing delight to their
customers by understanding their specific personal interests,
anticipating their needs, exceeding their expectations, and making every
moment and aspect of the relationship a pleasant -- or better yet, an
exhilarating -- experience.
(Click here for more info.)
DEVELOPING PEOPLE
The desire and ability of the company to
improve the lot of the employees working for it.
Businesses are most successful when the
leaders are not merely concerned with their interests (sales, profits,
success), but with the concerns of the customers, and even more so to
their own employees. Total concern for employees brings the business to
a state of unity, which can attract infinite accomplishment.(Click
here for more info.)
INNOVATION The desire and ability of the company to venture into new,
breakthrough areas of opportunity.
MAXIMUM UTILIZATION (OF RESOURCES) The desire and ability of
the company to improve its performance by full utilization of its
current resources.
COMMITMENT TO SOCIETY The commitment of the company to focus
on the social needs and aspirations of the society.
Their greatest growth occurs at moments when companies align the
development of these internal engines with the explosive emergence of
new forces in society. Companies that can attune their business
strategies to reflect the evolutionary changes of society in several or
all of their growth engines (market, products and services organization,
people, and finance) catch the growing swell of the wave of social
advancement. By synchronizing multiple waves of this energy, they are
catapulted forward and upward to levels ten times or more their previous
position.
For a more complete list of
business values, including a description of
each, click here.
Implementing,
Institutionalizing Values Values are only as good as they
are implemented into the company AT ALL LEVELS. Just to describe a value
in a mission statement or values statement is useless unless it is
pushed down into and implemented at all levels of the company.
A value is
thus institutionalized when it saturates all
aspects of the business; when it permeates all aspects of the
company, eventually without encouragement or
enforcement; and when it systematically
operates on its own through all activities and job positions. When
this is done, the value has an enormous potential to energize the
company, which leads to dramatically increased revenues and profits for the firm. Anything
less than the full saturation of values at all appropriate levels of the
company will not enable the value to bring the desired positive results.
To fully implement and thus institutionalize a valuein a company the following
steps need to all occur:
SELECTION-- Choose the values that you are
interesting in fully implementing in the company.
COMMITMENT-- There needs to be a full
commitment to implement the chosen values.Senior and middle
management, and other employees need to fully
commit to those values; commit to improving performance on those values.
STANDARDS-- A set of standards for each
activity in the company
needs to be implementedfor each value.
STRUCTURE-- The company
needs to have the right structure
(of job positions, divisions, departments,
etc.) to implement the values.
JOBS, ACTIVITIES & SYSTEMS--
The company must have clearly defined
job positions, activities, and streamlined systems to facilitate to
implement
the values.Values
need to be incorporated into every job
position, activity, every system. Standard
operating procedures and even individual job position tasks
need to be
linked to these values.
EMPLOYEE RESPONSIBILITY-- The responsibility of each
person
to implement each
value must be clearly defined and understood (e.g.
in their job orientation, in their job descriptions, from their manager,
etc.).
SKILLS-- Everyone
must have the skills to achieve high performance on
the values.Everyone must have
the skills they need to fulfill their responsibilities for the value.If necessary, additional training should
be implemented to upgrade the skills for value
implementation.
For
a full explanation of how to go through each of these steps to fully
implement, i.e. institutionalize one or more values, click
here.
NEW! AN ENTIRE SITE DEDICATED TO VALUES!
Values are powerful determinants of human
accomplishment,progress, and fulfillment.
Discover thepower of values and how to apply them to elevate your business and
your world
