Mission Statements, Vision, and Values – are just buzzwords to some, but we’ve gone to a lot of trouble to define ourselves through these watchwords. As a small business owner, it really helped me get my head straight regarding the identity of our business.
I have such a strong personal code (I tire myself out sometimes (!)), trying to identify my expectations of myself and others in terms of how I work and behave daily was an arduous process. To get to our core values, trying to find tangible explanations of what I did, how I did it and why I felt so strongly about things was particularly challenging.
So I dived in with the team (and a very good consultant), and we started trying to answer some very big questions. How would we describe our business? What is our ethic? What were our drivers and motivators?
We all shared in the pain of the process, but we got there, and the result is that we have a shared view of our business identity through these values which makes sense to us all.
- Realistic
- Respectful
- Refreshing
- Empowering
So, how has this impacted on daily business life?
We’ve always had a strong culture heavily influenced by my personal value set, but now that we have enshrined these as definitive Lawpoint values, the clarity has helped us all with our decision-making and prioritisation.
I have saved time operationally and strategically as I spend less time grappling with confusion between my personal and business values. Granted, there are a lot of similarities, but they have been extracted out of the messy cupboard of my brain in a rather tricky fashion and put back in an order that allows for a quicker, less painful extraction.
Less internal conflict has brought me less white noise, more time and peace of mind. (I have a busy head, and it is this that I treasure the most).
Also, an outcome that I wasn’t expecting was that these values acted like a rudder, steering me through the decision-making process. At times, they have kept myself and my team focused during discussions regarding which direction to take in certain situations.
It will come as no surprise that behind each value is a personal driver, a story and a history, which will be the subject of separate blogs over the coming months.
Thanks for reading!
