Luis M. Alvarez
As your company matures over time, at some point you might decide that you need to identify and articulate the guiding principles of the organization, so current and future employees understand what drives your company. Typically, we call those principles our Core Values and they are a short list of words that explain what the company stands for and what the people in the organization believe about themselves. Coming up with Core Values, though, is the easy part. Actually making them matter is a tougher proposition.
At Alvarez Technology Group, our Core Values have been in place for almost a decade and, although we’ve tweaked them a little over time, they remain essentially the same today as always:
- Build Trust
- Take Initiative
- Deliver Excellence
- Embrace Accountability
- Celebrate Work
When we came up with these values, we wanted more than something cute to put on our website or in our marketing literature. We needed to have a set a principles that we would use every day to help us make better decisions and to give us direction when we’re facing tough choices. Understanding why we do the things we do every day is a big factor in our growth and success over the years and our Core Values set the tone for us.
We make a point to highlight how our values impact us on a regular basis, whether it’s an interaction with a client or an internal conversation, and we can usually point to one of those five values for pretty much everything we do. That’s how we know we have the right set of values.
How about you? Does your company have a set of Core Values that you share with your staff? Are they written on that poster hung behind the door that no one every looks at or do you talk about them regularly and do they influence your decision-making process? If not, it may be time to revisit those values or at least dust off the poster and make them part of the conversation.
If you want to learn more about our Core Values and why they matter so much to us, or if you’ like to share your values, drop me an email. Let’s start a conversation!
