The Importance of Clear Business Values in the New Reality

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The Importance of Clear Business Values in the New Reality

The disruption of the past year has brought many new ways of doing and thinking about things, both for businesses and individuals. We have faced situations in which we have had to adapt quickly, or fail. Our CEO Rebecca Brooks writes more about this in her latest column for Forbes, titled “How clear business values got my company through the pandemic.”

 

Sticking to Your Values

In the piece, she outlines the four core values that Alter Agents mapped out as a team a few years ago to help guide the company: being candid, adaptive, symphonic, and playful. Turns out, these values were critical during the past few months. We could have never anticipated how being adaptive would have become so important. It has helped to “guide our attitude toward our new way of working, building relationships, and helping each other” Rebecca writes. And having clear values like this has worked: we nearly doubled the size of our business and our team in 2020, despite all of the headwinds blowing against us.

Rebecca maintains that all companies should make developing core values a priority, especially in the face of the ongoing crisis. If an organization already has values identified, now is the time for re-examination. It’s clear from recent events that we can never know what’s coming next, and values can help define a path. 

 

Values as a Priority

Rebecca offers guidance about how organizations, once values are identified, can put them to work in company culture and use them as a framework for decision making. Business leadership should prioritize: 

  • High levels of communication surrounding values to provide reassurance to uncertain populations
  • Including entire teams in ongoing communications to create a cohesive environment and make sure everyone is on the same page
  • Being transparent to avoid any erroneous assumptions and rumors 
  • Making the time to not only develop clear values but also “take action on them as a team”

She concludes by writing that “there’s a light at the end of this COVID-19 tunnel. But even when things return to some sense of normalcy, the importance of clear company values will not change. The pandemic has given us a reality check and an opportunity to be candid (another of our core values!) with ourselves when it comes to where we want our businesses to go. Take this opportunity for renewal and be honest about what your business and employees need and what you want to accomplish.”

 

Values-based organizations love company. If that’s you, we’d love to work together on exciting, quality research to drive your business to achieve its goals.

 

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