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My Purpose and Values
Many entrepreneurs look for external support to help them gain measurable commercial improvements in their business, for example to scale up, increase profitability, maximise shareholder value and so on.
Others are struggling with balancing their life well, or are feeling stressed out from running their business.
I’ve found over the years that whatever their requirements, prospective clients want to know where I’m coming from and what I believe in before sharing sensitive information. Fair enough.
I think the best way to do this is to explain my Purpose and Core Values.
Purpose
My definition of 'Purpose' in a business context is *why* does a business exist, other than the obvious, to make money.
There is ample evidence to show that 'purpose-led' businesses consistently outperform 'command and control' businesses. John Kotter and James Heskett report in their book Corporate Culture and Performance that purpose-led, values-driven companies outperform their counterparts in stock price by a factor of twelve. They found that without a purpose, management has a harder time rallying employees to increase productivity and customers have a harder time connecting with the company. Their decade-long research shows that purpose creates positive outcomes far greater than the sum of its parts.
Virgin founder Richard Branson summed up purpose nicely: "Success in business is no longer just about making money or moving up the corporate ladder. More and more, one of the biggest indicators of success is purpose."
My own purpose is to energise entrepreneurs who love what they do. Not only to achieve their goals, but also to do it in a sustainable way (their business and themselves). I do this by combining rigorous coaching methodologies with decades of real world business experience. Two well-known business leaders, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, and Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft, speak to the value of business coaching here. My coaching style is to empathise with my clients while challenging them directly, an approach beautifully articulated in Kim Scott's book 'Radical Candor'.
Core Values
My definition of Core Values in a business context is 'a roadmap for behaviour'. In other words how do you want to behave in your business to maximise your chances of success, and how do you want your managers and staff to behave when they're out of your sight?
Again, there’s ample evidence to show that businesses that invest time in articulating the behaviours they want to see in their people outperform those that don’t. Many entrepreneurs understand this as a concept, but sometimes what businesses do is create a list of words that look good — nothing more than a tick box exercise. An extreme example is Enron, whose Core Values were Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence, but whose actual behaviour, set from the top, was to make as much money as possible without getting caught.
Undertaking Core Values work properly takes a serious investment of time and effort. Every entrepreneur understands 'Return on Investment'; I believe an investment in articulating and embedding a business’s Core Values can be measured by 'Return on Behaviour'. Here’s an excellent Harvard Business Review article on the subject.
My own Core Values are:
Excellence
Analytical, Challenging, Knowledgeable,
Perceptive, Rigorous.
Love
Caring, Empathic, Compassionate, Fun, Helpful.
Authenticity
Congruent, Considered, Honest ('Radical Candour'), Measured.
Take a look at the Testimonials page to see if I live up to these behaviours in reality.
Expressed as a formula, I believe that Purpose + Core Values = the 'DNA' (or 'Culture') of a business.
Of course it’s possible to make lots of money by ignoring this stuff. Good luck to you, but I doubt we’ll be able to work together successfully.