Does Your Business Reflect Who You Are Today? Achieving Personal and Professional Alignment

Recognizing purpose, core values and vision as the purest and most sustainable forms of business propulsion.

Every day, we are presented with thousands of opportunities to make decisions, from the most minute to ridiculously complex. There are many factors, but one of the most significant in decision-making, especially when it comes to the ‘bigger stuff,’ may be our core values.

You’re eligible for a promotion at work, but only if you offer confidential information you swore to a colleague you wouldn’t. 

You know that you could cut costs by outsourcing production to an offshore-based facility, but you know that would mean not only laying off members of your current team, but also the strong possibility that the offshore team would only be making pennies on the dollar, which just doesn’t feel right.

These values tell you what kind of person you are, who you aspire to be, and they give you clear insight into HOW you can structure your life, your actions- and your business- in ways that feel in alignment with them.

But how do I know what my core values are? How do I use them constructively within my business? And most importantly, what benefits are inherent in building a business from this approach rather than a more traditional one?

You’re in the right place because those are the questions we’re exploring this month and I’m very much looking forward to having this conversation with you.

Discovering Your Core Values

The first step in implementing your core values is illuminating and clearly defining what you stand for. They are the principles that give our lives meaning and also what we can always go back to during challenging and uncertain times. Unlike a belief, which is merely an assumption we think to be true, values are universal and arise from the experience of simply being human.

According to the Barret Values Centre, “whatever we need—whatever is important to us or what is missing from our lives—is what we value.  As our life conditions change, and as we evolve and grow, our value priorities change. When we use our values to make decisions, we focus on what is important to us—what we need to feel a sense of well-being.”

How do you determine your core values? Start with a long, wide-ranging list of values and choose 5-7 that particularly resonate with you. (Check out Dr. Russ Harris’ book, The Confidence Gap, if you need a launch point.) The list will have traits such as loyalty, financial security, and accountability, just to name a few. Your answers will likely change slightly over time, but overall, your top choices here should give you a solid idea of what matters most to you.

Another helpful tool is to take an honest assessment of the people in your life: your family, your friends, your colleagues, your employees...Narrow it down to 3-5 people who you truly admire. What are the values that you see in them? What do they do that inspires you?

Finally, practice observing yourself. Start noticing your thoughts, your reactions in certain situations, patterns you may not have noticed. This may feel awkward initially, especially when you start discovering areas that may be out of alignment, but the only way to create lasting change is to first understand where you’re starting.

Incorporating YOU into Your Business

The next step is taking an accurate assessment of your business, from the bottom all the way to the top, leaving no department or system unturned. At the end of the day, your business is a conscious extension of yourself, so if its policies, practices and plans don’t feel that way- and in a good way!- then it’s time to start making some shifts. It’s also important to note here that when you have alignment between your personal and professional goals, it’s infinitely easier to focus on your Zone of Genius, meaning you stay working ON your business rather than in it. 

Think back to the early days of your business and why you started it in the first place. Do those reasons still hold true? How has your ‘why’ changed over the years? Does what you’re doing now feel as good to you as it did back then? If you find that the current is not aligning with the past, then you know that a change is necessary, at least if your goal is long-term, sustainable growth.  

A common challenge I find with clients is around the definition of success. It’s easy for us, as business owners, to get caught up in the illusion of success. Yet when we dig just a bit deeper, we can realize that it’s not actually our own version that we’re chasing, but someone else’s. What does success look like to YOU and how can you build your business in a way that moves toward it? Of course, most entrepreneurs have a financial goal, but I invite you to look beyond that. For me personally, one of my biggest indicators of success is the amount of time I get to spend with my family and doing the things that we love, together. Getting to do what I love for my career AND creating ample time to spend with my family is what aligns most with my core values and ultimately FEELS like success. What feels like success to you? 

Now I’m going to let you in on what I think could be the most significant piece of advice I’ll give you today: revisit and revise these regularly. It’s human nature to evolve, which makes it only natural that our businesses do the same. You aren’t the same person you were 20 years ago- or maybe even 6 months ago- and it’s absolutely essential that you recognize that so that you can adjust accordingly, both in your life AND within your business.

There’s Never Been a Better Time to Build Your Business as an Extension of SELF

The reality of running a sustainable and successful business is that there must be a significant emphasis on and alignment with our core values and visions.

“For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.”

• Jim Collins, ‘Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't’

Having your business based on a committed goal and shared vision will create a brand that attracts not only loyal clients, but also passionate team members. Your values are essential in hiring the RIGHT people. Getting the best person for the job not only means getting someone who is qualified, efficient and skilled, but also someone who is aligned with your vision and committed to enhancing it.

Technical skills and efficiency can be developed, but core values cannot. 

One common misconception is that a COO’s work is all based on the empirical. In reality, my first step is helping clients to get crystal clear on their core values and long-term visions so that we can ensure they are reflected in their systems, strategies and planning efforts. 

As a fractional COO, I’m in a unique position that I not only get to experience the powerful feeling of alignment within my own business, but I get to help build and witness the incredible impact it has within the organizations I work with. There’s nothing like it.

My goal is to help you identify these areas within yourself so that we can build an internal system reflective of the business’ external values. I can’t do the heavy-lifting when it comes to discovering your ‘why’ and remembering your true purpose. What I can do is help you tap into those fundamentals and build systems, strategies and cultures in alignment with them. 

If you suspect that your business has drifted away from who you are and what you do TODAY...If you would like help bringing the two back together so that your personal and professional values align...I hope you’re realizing by now that there’s a better way, an ‘easier’ way. And I can help discover it.  Let’s have a conversation, then work together to ensure that your business is running off the infallible duo of hard work AND core values.