Quality, standards, ethics, values, trust are all key facets of business but to what extent do you pay them lip service rather than live by them?  How often to these aspects seem to be at odds with making a profit?

How often is there a decision to be made which if you follow your values will take you down one route but if you sell out on your values (yes that’s what you’re doing) will take you down another, often appearing more profitable?  It’s hard at times, and usually these times are at the beginning of practicing this habit.  It’s harder to stay with your values and keep looking for a solution that will deliver profitability to the business, than it is to go with the obvious profitable solution that asks you to ignore a value or two.  However as it becomes clear both to yourself and to others that compromising on values isn’t an option then finding profitable and ethical solutions becomes easier.

Organisations have values they claim to live by.  It’s the leaders that are then beholden to live by them.  It’s not that organisations are ethical, or unethical, it’s that the people within choose to act ethically or not.  Makes your bum cheeks squeak a bit when you think of it like that.  It takes the anonymity out of it and brings it back where it needs to be, personal.  As a leader you have to walk the talk – well OK you don’t have to, but then of course if you don’t you’ve said it doesn’t matter to the rest of your staff.

The tide is turning on tolerating unethical behaviour.  Yes we’re accountable to investors to make a good ROI, yet if we cut corners and compromise on quality, standards and ethics, we run the risk of being found out, and then been called to account.  We only need to look at the News of The World to get a timely reminder of where our daily actions and choices can lead us.

So is there anything today you’d hesitate to put your name to?  There is still time to change all that.

So if you’re wondering what to do about the impact your current culture is having on the performance of your business you could drop us a line and we can suggest some specific sources that will help you.

Alternatively here is a presentation from Netflix.  OK it’s 128 slides long, but if you’re interested in the what and some how around others companies embracing and working with their culture and values, then get clicking, it’s worth it.

Often in the overwhelm of staying a float and finding new business leaders can overlook the importance of communicating the vision.

Gone are the industrial days of autocratic decision making and dutiful employees seeking rewards and promotions up a linear ladder.  The information days have seen a open access to information, take wikipedia and open source programming as two examples.  Perhaps now we’re seeing the rise of wiki leadership, this dynamic, collaborative style where the leader knows they don’t have the answer to everything, yet they’re confident that someone somewhere will.  Where ideas can flow freely up and down the organisation, which now means they flow freely around the organisation.  Where the leader has the confidence to ask questions out beyond the company walls, take LinkedIn groups as an example. 

Wiki leadership, now there’s a thought.  How much of your leadership style and approach is to solve, answer and provide some form of parental role and how much of your style is dynamic, open and receptive.

Let’s not confuse doing well with success. Doing well is meeting expectations. Success is growth. To grow you need a passion to go beyond what is expected of you. An executive without a passion for his job comes across as dull, no matter how efficient he may be. And this concept of being dull is reflected back to you and feeds upon itself until the dullness becomes part of your personality. This personality will impact how well you perform. And worse, it will become part of how others treat you. You do not work in isolation. How you are perceived by others is an important of how successful you are. Not only will you not receive the respect you are due from your peers, you will become an uninspiring leader. The words boring and leader cannot coexist. A manager needs to inspire others to follow and work with him. If you are not inspired yourself, how do you expect to inspire others? No matter how boring and uninspiring your work is, your passion can turn that around, and the way you do it will be an example to others, allowing them to enable their passion. And that will earn you their respect.

Every job has it boring and frustrating moments – its when these get to be a major part of the job that passion dies. Do not accept boredom. Focus on the big picture. If you know where you are going, the boredom and frustration become only hurdles to be overcome, and not the race itself. If your target is not something that inspires you, your target is too easy and you are lazy. Just like a muscle, if your ambition is not exercised and pushed to do more, it will become weak. In fact, it may become so weak that you become incapable of even doing today’s job. If you are 40 today, you will not have the energy you had when you were 20. But that’s not important if your passion for your job pushes you to keep doing better. The passion in the mind and heart will more than compensate for the slowing of the body. If you allow your passion to carry your forward, you will be respected. And once you have respect, you will have opportunities to do more. And as you do and contribute more, you so will your need to continue on this path. And that need is passion.

What do you want in life? Once you know that, focus on how you will achieve your goal. Not if, but how. The “if” will be taken care of by your passion.

There is a very simple equation:-

High Trust = High Speed + Low Cost

Low Trust = Slow Speed + High Costs

Look at the performance of your business, team, a specific relationship. Do things happen quickly or is everyone second guessing, double checking, re-doing and in the worst case preparing to cover and protect themselves should something go wrong?

Trust is a multiplier effect.  High trust people get the significant projects; you wouldn’t leave your child with someone you didn’t trust and a business makes no different decisions.

• High trust people get promoted and receive more of the company’s resources.
• Collaboration, engagement, innovation, job fulfilment all increase when there is trust.
• The ability to attract and retain talent increases where there is trust.
• Revenue, customer loyalty and referrals also increase if there is trust.

In fact research shows that high trust organisations out perform low trust ones by 278%

On April 15th at 4pm I’ll be interviewing Sue Swanborough, HR Director at General Mills UK, a company that yearly features in the Fortune Top 100 companies to work for.  Sue is an expert in trust and its impact and application throughout the business, from board level to shop floor.  The results of this have been evident in the business results achieved.

In the past Sue, a science graduate has worked in a number of fmcg businesses including Boots, Mars and most recently General Mills. She has moved cross functionally through R&D, supply chain, logistics and manufacturing before joining HR. She has held a number of generalist and specialist roles covering the full spectrum of HR. Her passion and expertise lies in cultural and leadership development through building trust to deliver excellent business results.

On this 75 minute tele conference call we’ll be discussing:-

• The impact trust has on the performance of a business
• What leaders need to pay attention to
• The top 3 mistakes leaders make and how this endangers the levels of trust they have
• Key strategies to build trust – whatever the size of your business
• Plus we’ll open the lines so you can ask your questions direct, as well as giving you the opportunity to send in your questions beforehand.

To secure your place and get a hard copy of the call, including transcript, follow this link – building trust

As leader’s we need to be aware both of our presence and the wake we leave behind, these are powerful forces that impact our ability to encourage our staff to live the company’s values.

We might ask our employees for Creativity, Commitment or Integrity, but they have to choose to give them.  They’re not skills but intrinsic traits which we can only encourage to be expressed.

Join us on this 1 day workshop to discover your personal fit with your organisation’s current and desired culture and learn about the common barriers to business growth and cultural transformation.

What will I learn?

You will complete your own Individual Values Assessment before the day and we’ll take you through what the results mean.   Looking at what it means to you, your leadership, the current and desired culture of the organisation.  You’ll have a cleared idea of what’s important to you and what’s required of your leadership in 2010.

You’ll also learn the common barriers to business growth, the cost and symptoms of these and the 4 steps you can take to avoid them.

Plus we’ll share with you some aspects of best practice in the role values play in business performance and releasing human potential.  There will also be the opportunity to learn from your peers as you share your experiences and insights.  The event has been designed to be interactive, informative and experiential.

Who is this designed for?

This day is aimed at CEO’s, MD’s, FD’s and HRD’s who want to improve the performance of their organisation and create a profitable and healthy culture.

Date, Location, Investment

4^th February 2010

Manchester, venue to be confirmed

8:30 Registration and coffee

9:00 – 16:00 Event

Your investment for this event including all materials, lunch and refreshments is £247+ VAT.  Places must be booked before 31^st December to allow sufficient time for you to complete your Individual Values Assessment and for the results to be processed.

To book or find out more contact us now.

Addressing business leaders from across the North West at this week’s ‘Emerging from the Recession’ conference at Manchester’s MacDonald Hotel, the Runcorn based Group Managing Director said the adoption of values-led leadership could assist organisations in weathering the economic storm.

“At Fresenius Kabi, values have provided an important underpinning of what we do as a business and they have enabled everybody within that business to be engaged,” he added.” I am convinced that our progress would not have been as sustainable without values.”

Ruth Sanderson,one of the conference organisers and MD of blue pea POD, the Chester based leadership consultancy told the delegates that all the speakers would outline their experiences of corporate culture and its impact on performance.

“The uncertain times have seen many companies lose their way,” she said:” But forward-thinking CEOs are working with their corporate culture and leadership values because they know these hold the key to business growth.

“The level of interest in this conference in Manchester is, in my view, a clear indication of the growing acknowledgement of the role of values in corporate life. We have senior players in attendance today who have all experienced the positive impact of company values. We want them to share their experiences with all our delegates.”

Her co-organiser Sue Coyne, Executive Coach and Culture Change Consultant of Stockport-based Connectiveness Ltd added that research had shown that the adoption of a values based corporate culture within an organisation had a measurable effect on performance from sales figures to the bottom line.

Mike Stevens, the Manchester based Group and UK Human Resources Director for the £300 million turnover Odeon and UCI Cinema Group told the conference that he became involved in building a values based corporate company when the Odeon and UCI operations were being integrated.

“We conducted a company wide survey of our employees and as a company we were shaken to the core when the results showed a worrying level of disengagement and negativity.”

“We made a conscious decision to apply values to the culture using engagement, communication and development. We have already seen some very positive results from our work and now values are integral in every aspect of our business.”

After the conference Ruth Sanderson said: “Many companies are now looking forward to emerging from this long and difficult recession and this conference was the start of a series of events to give our delegates the benefit of the experiences of our speakers, all of whom spoke very positively about values-led leadership and corporate culture.

“We believe in the effectiveness of values-led leadership and the end of the recession will give many companies the opportunity to examine the many positives from this approach to business. Putting in those values now will pay huge dividends as time goes on.”