This month marks a milestone of sorts for me. On July 1, my company marks its 10th anniversary in business. For a small business, that’s an accomplishment, and for a consulting firm it is remarkable. A trusted mentor told me to keep my "day job" and give it five years—I’d know then whether it would succeed. That happened in four years, not five, and it has succeeded beyond my best expectations.
Contrast that with a Peoria business/civic leader who, upon hearing my dream, looked at me doubtfully in 1992 and said, "Why would you want to do that in Peoria?" Fortunately, I don’t think that would happen today. We’re in much better shape as a metro area now, and I believe people with a vision for starting businesses and services designed to build communities, serve people, and make money get a lot more encouragement now.
I’ve worked with close to 170 clients in those 10 years and led seminars around the country that reached thousands of people. While I’ve been privileged to share information and to dispense advice, clients and seminar participants have taught me a lot about success and effectiveness in management and life. They showed me what doing business well can be like, and what happens when business is conducted poorly, too. Let me, with their help, pass along to you four keys to ethical and effective organizations.
- Know—and live—your real corporate values. Employees learn very quickly what the value set is in a workplace. How? They find out what comes first in decision making, in rewards, and in customer service. What are the real values your organization embraces? Are they really the values you want to demonstrate when striving for results?
- People always come first. Again, this statement should be obvious, but the practice in so many organizations is some people come before others, or that money comes first, or work process, or deadlines and sales quotas, or anything other than people.
- Serve without expectation. Sometimes managers and executives (and board members) act as if workers owe them something.
Successful and effective organizations take a strong stance of service at every level of the organization. The guiding question in decision making is "How will this decision enable us to serve the reasonable wants and needs of others: customers, suppliers, employees, leaders?"
Robert Greenleaf, in his book Servant Leadership hits the nail on the head. Servants lead with foresight and a willingness to facilitate the success of others.
- Create significance. In the end, work is more than producing widgets, processing claims, or promoting community services. It’s about waking up in the morning with passion, purpose and fun regarding work, because the work we do is not about meeting targets; it’s about creating value and improvement. It’s about reaching the end of a career, or the end of life, and being able to say, "I made a difference because of what I did." IBI
