Values

Once you have developed a Vision and a Mission, work on your Values: what sort of company do you want or need to be to realise your aims?

Refer to your completed Worksheet 2 – where you examined your strengths and identified where you could differentiate yourself from the competition – your answers should help you.

In defining your Values, you are trying to crystallise how your company should behave.

It might help to imagine explaining this to your staff. For example, if you were recruiting staff, how would you describe your company to them? What behavioural traits would you expect from them? What would you say that the company stands for?

The Values are a key differentiating factor in the life of any organisation. They are the characteristics that will underpin every action you take, so they must be traits that you think will be important in achieving your Vision and Mission.

Fill in the Values section in Worksheet 3 – remember you should have no more than five or six and try to make at least some of them differentiating (distinctive), ie avoiding the standard, generic Values such as ‘professional’, ‘integrity’, ‘passionate’ etc.

Once you have defined your five or six Values, expand them by writing a sentence for each one explaining what it means within your company. The Values must have meaning – what does each Value mean in terms of how your brand and your people should behave? Defining them will bring you clarity.

For example, if ‘innovative’ is one of your values, then you must be sure that your company lives up to this and always behaves in an appropriate way:

Value: Innovative

Meaning: We never simply accept the status quo but are always looking for new and better ways of doing things whether that is a new product, service or internal system.