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What is it and how can we create one? Your values are the underlying attitudes and beliefs that shape your fundamental approach to all aspects of your life and your business. The core ideology of the business is essential and there are very good reasons why... amongst others, it is the key to greatness!
When you have a core ideology, it defines the soul of your business, becomes a consistent "identity", which defines the business' sense of character and integrity.
Go through this process, solidifying your values and purpose, long-term goals and vision, getting it down on paper, share it with everyone in your business - even clients, get feedback and comments. With this vision, your employees, partners and customers never have to wonder where you're going as a business because it's all spelled out for them! "... core ideology provides the glue that holds a business together."
The nature of core ideology
- Key to greatness: The key to greatness is a sense of character, identity, unwavering purpose, integrity and all the core values that you truly stand for.
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Key differentiator: What differentiate the greatest companies from the rest is having a core ideology. Its existence, authenticity and integrity is important.
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Business ingredients: The core ideology defines the essential and enduring ingredients of a business.
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Permanent: The core ideology will probably never change, because it represents unwavering values of those in the business.
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Impact: This small set of extremely powerful guiding principles will inspire everyone in the business to greatness! They influence every decision every day at every level.
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Justification: The core ideology isn't all things to all people and requires no external justification. It doesn't have to be likable or 'humanistic' to the external world.
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Importance: The ideology is fundamental and extremely deeply held beliefs by those inside the business - they remain true to it no matter what!
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Variables: Whereas the core ideology is 'permanent' - strategy, processes, operating practices and structures must change when the need arises.
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Dependencies: Your core values aren't dependent on anything... you have them just because you can, independent of the current environment, competitive challenges, or management fads.
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Substitute 'purpose': Poor substitutes for purpose is something like: "Maximizing shareholder value".
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Recruiting: Having well-defined values, purpose, goals and vision, makes it easier to recruit. Candidates will know what the business is about, and you will get a sense whether the candidate has the courage to act congruently all of the time and what their authentic values are.
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Employees: We can't instill our core ideology into others, we have to find people who are predisposed to share your values and purpose, attract and retain those people, and let those who don't share your values go elsewhere.
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Set standards: A collective core ideology enables members of a business to take part in creating their work environment.
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Inspiration: Helps everyone in the business to be more productive by looking beyond the present and focus on overreaching long-term goals.
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Guide: Decision making on all levels, such as strategic issues, especially during times of significant change and ethical behaviour
- Support: Enlists external support.
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Communication: Creates better relationships and communication between employees, partners, customers and suppliers.
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Public relations: Serves as a public relations tool.
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Presentation tool: It can be used in presentations to shareholders, to let them know where the business is heading.
- Building blocks: The core ideology consist of:
- Core values: They express the ethics of the business and its members as they seek to achieve their purpose, goals and vision - it stipulates what behavior is appropriate, permissible, and what is not.
- Core purpose: The core purpose is the business's reason for being. Eg. Being number one or number two worldwide in our core businesses - GE .
- "Big hairy audacious goals": BHAGs - those goals have to be clear and compelling, a catalyst for team spirit, a clear finish line, tangible, easy to explain and understand.
- Envisioned future: This is a vivid description of the future that will capture the imagination of every employee and create momentum in the business.
Discovering the core ideology of your business
It is discovering the core values we hold as individuals that provide unwavering guidance in our lives. It's very meaningful to the people inside your business and it need not be exciting to others outside. The quest for the answer to what your business is and what it stands for on the path to greatness.
- How: There is no right or wrong way to discover your business' vision - it's a unique journey. You discover core ideology by looking inside. You can't fake it - it has to be authentic. It's not an intellectual exercise.
- Setting: Find a calm setting where all participants will feel comfortable. A day off or a weekend breakaway is ideal.
- Who: It's typically done by the core management and a few key people whose creative input would be beneficial. You have to assess the degree of participation pertinent for your business, identify those whom you feel would really be helpful.
- Core Values: Ask all the participants to list as many as possible answers to the following questions:
- What core values do you personally bring to and express at work?
- What would you tell your children are the core values that you hold at work?
- If you became instantly rich and could retire for the rest of your life, what values would you live by?
- If those values would make you unable to obtain business from some clients, would you keep them?, and why?
- Define the business's identity and caracter, write down whatever comes to mind, keywords or pictures, anything.
- Explore what you love about the business and your work experience and what you would like to change.
- Core Purpose: It expresses reasons for existence. Use the following exercises:
- The five why's: Ask the team to tell you why the business is in business. Then ask why again. Repeat five times to arrive at the core of the purpose of the business.
- Historic purpose: Goes back to the original purpose of the business to see whether it is still valid and how it can accompany the business into the future.
- Co-creating purpose: Consists of brainstorming to extract individual and group purpose.
- Planetary purpose: Brainstorm questions such as: 'How do we interact with the world? How do we contribute to the big picture? Why are we existing as a business? What is our contribution to the world around us?'
- "Big Hairy Audacious Goals"
- Ask the team to write a description of the long-term goals of the business, focussing on the goals which are unlikely to change over the years. Here are some examples. Write as many as you can come up with. Examples from 'Built to Last' by James Collins and Jerry Porras:
- Quantitative: Become a $125 billion business by the year 2000 (Wal-mart).
- Qualitative: Become the dominant player in commercial aircraft and bring the world to the jet age (Boeing).
- Common-enemy: Crush Adidas (Nike).
- Role-model: Become the Harvard of the West (Stanford University).
- Internal transformation: Transform this business from a defence contractor into the best diversified high-technology business in the world (Rockwell).
- Envisioned future: Assert clearly what the business can be at its best and what is unique about your future business. It is extremely important to make it vivid in description, detailed, something you can describe that people can picture in their minds.
- Marketing and PR flair: Use expertise from marketing or public relations to add the appropriate words to capture the visual flair of the business' goals.
- Questions: How will we know we are making significant progress toward achieving our goal - what will we see, hear, feel, experience - what will be going on around you, what would you be doing?
- Enriching: Ask each member of the team to stand up and "act" the description, as if they had to describe it in a major public event.
- Checking: Take videos and looking back at it, and find other ways to decide if the description is clear and compelling.
- Dedication: Ask members if it was something they could dedicate themselves to achieving over the next decade
- Value alignment: Starting with delineating the future environment, defines how behaviours and skills, values, identities and relations to the outside world have to be to be in alignment with the core values set up earlier.
- Goal alignment: What would the business be like after achieving your BHAG?
- Sort through input: Look for patterns and values that seem to be coming up often. Whilst the team is on a break, you could round up all the input and combine it into one document for the next procedure.
- Brainstorming: Discuss which items on the list are to be kept, combined or thrown out. Make the statement concise, motivating and memorable through brainstorming.
- Awareness: Make the statement known to all employees and clients. Published on the website, in the newsletters, or communicated in any other way to the staff. Become more aware of your business' core ideology.
Resources:
- 'Back to the Beginning - Core Values' by Rick Sidorowicz
- 'Business Vision with a Twist' by Estelle Métayer
- 'Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies' by James Collins and Jerry Porras
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