Core values as plot of your own story

THE MANILA TIMES
The Business Times p.B5
Monday, July 21, 2003
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2003/jul/21/business/20030721bus4.html

LEARNING AND INNOVATION
By Moje Ramos-Aquino
Core values as plot of your own story

In business as in life, the best thing to do is write your own book as you go along. Don’t just follow what others are doing or saying. Otherwise, you will just be one of those more of the same.

To be able to weave your own story, you must ask the following questions: first, what do you want to achieve with your written masterpiece (your vision)? Secondly, why you are writing your story and what is your main plot (your mission)? Thirdly, how will you develop your plot? Answering these questions is what we call strategic thinking. They form the conceptual framework of your entrepreneurial book.

So far you have determined your organization’s shared vision and matched mission in this Journey in Entrepreneurship. We are now determining your company’s value system that is congruent with your own and your stakeholders’ personal value system.

Values will guide your day-to-day actions and thoughts that collectively create the desired culture in your organization. Stories of successful companies prove that you need only to articulate a few core values that:

1. formed from the collective beliefs of individuals in the organization. Shared and aligned with each stakeholder’s values;
2. become the foundation or standard of acceptable behavior and thinking concerning how to conduct business and everyday work;
3. are attached to everything, every action and every business decision in the organization. They are articulated into policies, procedures, practices, structures, rules of conduct and other similar guides for action of employees and other stakeholders;
4. are enduring and consistent over time. You never change them for any reason even if your business is in successful or dismal times; and
5. are driven and led by example by organizational leaders from top to frontline.

From these value statements, you could deduce why Boots Healthcare Int’l is hugely successful and why it attracts the proper employees, suppliers and customers.

• Passionately pursuing success.
This means that as individuals, they are prepared to challenge the status quo, aim to be first with new ideas and never settle for second best, know how they each contribute to the company’s success, stretch the boundaries of personal performance.

• Caring for customers.
This means that as individuals, they understand the needs of their customers and consumers, exceed their expectations in innovative and imaginative ways, respect commercial and cultural differences and use every opportunity to build relationships.

• Building powerful teams.
This means that as individuals, they agree on their goals and see them through, strive for consensus and not compromise, treat each other with respect and learn from each other’s experience and understand and recognize each other’s contribution.

• Working openly together.
This means that as individuals they are straightforward in their dealings with each other, listen to others, and explain decisions they have made, recognize and remove barriers to action and avoid a culture of blame.

• Acting with integrity.
This means that as individuals they are honest and do what they say they will do, take responsibility for their actions, guard and build the company’s reputation and brands and take into account the social and environmental impact of their business.

Boots owns 800 highly respected and successful brands and proprietary healthcare and beauty products and services. Among them are Strepsils, Nurofen and Clearasil. It has 66 stores and 106 host retailers like Watson stores worldwide. They are focused on the health and beauty market and are confident of growing with them.

More importantly, Boots management, staff and suppliers abide by their core values wherever they are in the world. They have written their own business stories and print their own book by living their values. And their stories live on.

What about your company?

World Peace: Bien Galvez, proprietor of Consolidated Diesel Parts in Quiapo, Manila, says to have world peace we should oppose anything that is genetically modified. We should preserve nature. This means preserving and saving lives, including those of unborn babies.

1st Congreso Internacional 2003 Panama. You are invited to attend the ASTD Global Network Panama Conference and Expo on September 17-19, 2003, at the Hotel Riande Continental, Panama City, Panama. Conference languages are both Spanish and English. Speakers from Africa, Australia, India, the Philippines, United States, Europe and Central and South American countries will truly give this conference an international perspective. This columnist will be speaking on the topic “Leadership and Development.”

For details and brochures, please call Grace Victoriano at 715-9332.

Personal: “I am requesting the pious readers to please include in your prayers the early repose of the soul of my father, Ambrozio Zulueta Ramos, 82, who died of heart ailment on July 13, 2003.”

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(Ms. Moje Ramos-Aquino is president of Paradigms & Paradoxes Corp. and helps companies develop shared vision, matched missions and congruent values. She could be reached at moje@mydestiny.net)