It Starts And Ends With Values

Values!!! It starts and ends with values!!!

You might not think that it does — you might not be aware that it does — but, regardless, it always starts and ends with values!!!

Values permeate everything about your business whether you want them to or not. And whether you think about it or not.

You set about to create a new business: and you’re instantly instilling your own value-set, either by default or by specific choice, infused into everything that you do and every way that you do it.

You get hired as the new CXO of an existing business: and you’re continuing on with some of the already present set of values while also infusing some of your own values to the extent that you set about making changes.

You get employed somewhere below the C-suite level and, to fit in, you adopt much if not most of the existing values of the business in order to fit in.  And then you’ve likely adopted all of the existing values by the time you’ve adjusted sufficiently to fit in. Sure, you bring your own, and perhaps (dare we suggest) quirky-values (“quirky” by that organisation’s standards anyhow). Hey, that’s what helps to make you unique after all. But every organisation’s values – consciously or not — dominate over time the behaviour of the people within it. And thereby dominate the experiences that those outside of the organisation experience of it.

As someone within the particular organisation, whether you’re ready for it or not, cognisant of it or not, it always starts and ends with values. And that should sound loudly for you. Dinggg!!!

Now, perhaps you don’t believe me.

Think of the worst service you have ever experienced as a customer from any business or organisation.  The service you experienced grated on you. So much so that you had to tell others about it, particularly afterwards. Even for a very long time afterwards. The values that you wanted and expected were simply not present in the service you received — or, indeed, that you didn’t even receive if there was no service at all.  There was a definite mismatch between the values expressed by the business and by the people inside the business on the one hand and your customer expectations from outside the business on the other. And while you certainly knew of this values mismatch, and although you couldn’t avoid the experience of this values mismatch, and even though you may not have interpreted it specifically as a “values mismatch”, the people inside the business had some (lesser) clue of the existence of this mismatch. They didn’t experience it as you did. Perhaps, and quite likely, they weren’t even aware of their own values as expressed through their service delivery. But the values were expressed. And you felt the mismatch.

Values sound loudest when the worst of service has been experienced. And the message there: there’s such a definite need for that business to implement a far better set of values. The need for change sounds so strongly. Dinggg!!!

Now think of, at the alternative extreme, the best service that you have ever experienced, when you were so impressed with the service you received that you simply had to tell others about that as well.  Your expectations were surpassed. The values expressed by the service-deliverers so clearly exceeded your own expectations. The values mismatch this time provided a most pleasant surprise. And this time, almost definitely, the people inside the business were considerably aware of their value-set. The expression of the values and your experience of the service was the result of very conscious choices and implementations of values. One can scarcely deliver that quality of service without very conscious decision-making that encompasses implementation of specifically determined values.

So, values also sound loudest when the very best of service has been delivered and experienced. And the message there: a well-chosen and exceptionally well-implemented set of values can cast a brand into its own, and simply superior, class. The need for excellence in values-choice and values-implementation provides capacity for a decidedly profound brand distinction. An edge unmatched by others. Dinggg!!!

Your own experiences of service attest to the volume of the message that values convey. Indeed, you have without doubt been the conveyor of the messages of your own experiences as a customer, communicated with more conviction whenever your experiences have been closer to the extremes. The extremes communicate the absolutely awful and horrendous at one end and the most amazing, most admired, most surprising and delightful at the other end. The extremes communicate the vast chasm between what you most need to avoid with — and within — your business and where the greatest potential for your business awaits your determined implementations. Dinggg!!!

Now while values sound loudest at the extremes, they are no less significant and vital at the ‘betweens’. And I hazard a guess that that is where the business that you’re a part of is currently located. Are the values of your particular business consciously determined? Are the values of your business strategically, skillfully, consciously implemented, and integrated purposefully into the business, into what the business does, and into how the business does it? Because these implemented values highlight what your business and your brand is about. Or, alternatively, do values unconsciously, considerably aimlessly drift by default into your business actions and consequently, then, into your customers’ experiences?

Do note that the tendency over time for businesses that have unconscious selection of their value-set and unconscious, non-purposeful implementations of those values is for those businesses to drift progressively towards the low-quality service extreme. You know, the extreme that you’re horrified by when you’re the customer! If this is your business: Dinggg!!! You need to hear the message clearly that now is the time to change course.

For those businesses that have consciously determined and selected a set of values but haven’t consciously implemented and diffused those values through all that they do as a business: Dinggg!!! Values are useless sitting on a shelf. Values have to be implemented to actually be values. Otherwise, they are valueless!

And for those businesses that have consciously determined and selected a set of values and have feigned to implement them strategically throughout the business: Dinggg!!! The greatest potential for you and your business awaits, but you need strategic, skillful, conscious implementations of the selected values to take your customers’ experiences, and your business, to wondrous new, superlative heights. There’s potential beyond the current. But you have to want it first. You have to desire it. You have to determine that you need it. Dinggg!!!

Your customers either stay with your business as a result of the values that you project to them and that they experience, or they leave your business as a result of the values that you project to them and that they experience. Either way, for your customers’ journey with you, it all starts and ends with values. Indeed, it’s values all the way.

Dinggg!!!