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.
Levels of Value Implementation There are actually three levels of success that
we can measure value implementation. The first is the acceptance
of the values amongst management with the push of upper management. The second is the
acceptance of the values amongst management even without the pressure of top management.
The third is when each manager believes in the values of the company and accepts it as
their very own. While the first stage can happen fairly rapidly, the second and third
stages take a long time to develop, and indicate a mature company that can grow at very
accelerated levels.
-Which values is the company
weak in, and should probably adopt in the future?
-How are you going to adopt
these values throughout the company? Are you really committed to adopting them?
Who will be in charge of adopting them?
-The ultimate power of
values is the ability to express it in every detail and act that the company
performs. How can you apply the values you are currently implementing or wish to implement
to every activity, system, standard operating procedure, and job position in the
company. Once you figure that out, develop a plan to accomplish this, and implement
the plan ASAP! You will be tapping into the greatest secret of business success!
To see additional Growth Online insights on Business Values, click
here.
Additional Information
For a more complete list of
business values, including a
description of each,
grouped by
type of value (physical, organizational, and psychological),
click here.
To see an article
on
how
providing customer
delight
is a key
to business success,
click here.
To see an article on
how commitment to people is the highest business value, click
here.
To see an article on
how to tap into the emerging needs
of society as a great value, click here.
