What Can a Lack of Values Cost Us?

The interaction we’ve had with Craig, Kim, and their team over the years since they bought their business has given us a ton of clarity for the critical role values can play in a business. That experience has also helped us develop a clearer picture of who we can best serve through the work we’re do...

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Living, Breathing Proof

Over the course of my close to fifty years on this ball of mud, I’ve learned that the only people who truly like change are the ones who came up with the idea for the specific change that’s happening in any given moment. I can tolerate change when I have some level of control in how it occurs or whe...

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Changes We Had to Make

As we developed more clarity around the values of the clients we enjoyed working with the most, we found more and more opportunities to challenge them on how to tie those values to nearly every conversation they had with their teams. This didn’t require major changes in what they were already doing;...

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A Slight Change In Our Approach

Throughout our professional lives, Cindy and I had seen a wide range of values defined by the organizations we were part of. A few either had no clearly defined values to speak of or they just never referenced them. Others had a couple of values listed in a policy manual or on a bulletin board but d...

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A Strange but Enlightening Experience

I blocked my calendar on the afternoon for February 24, 2022 to roll out that new handbook for all the team members working with Craig and Kim. Having done similar roll-outs several times in the decade leading up to it, I had a picture in my mind of what to expect - and I dreaded it! While my goal w...

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A Painful Process, but with a Twist

Having been a few years since I handled all aspects of human resources for an organization on a daily basis, and never dealing with an ownership transition, I left that initial dinner meeting with a list of items I’d need to dig into prior to their upcoming acquisition date. As much as I never liked...

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A Priceless Introduction

I wrapped up Leading With A Clear Purpose by sharing how having our own extremely clear purpose helped us push through the Covid mandates that prevented us from capitalizing on the momentum we had built in our business going into 2020 and doing much billable work for anyone in the second half of tha...

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Identifying What Was Missing…

As I opened the second part of Leading With a Clear Purpose, I made a strong case for how much each of us are attracted to being part of something that matters. I’m convinced that this applies to everyone at any level of any organization. I realize that there are plenty of folks who do what they do,...

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The Right Foundation for Supporting the Workload

In 2012, I made my first significant career change in more than a decade. While I had a hand in various human resource tasks and projects during the dozen or so years I led our facility’s behavior-based safety process and supported many of our company’s locations across North America that were activ...

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How Action & Attitude Impact Values

It’s our privilege and our responsibility as leaders to help our people become better. Holding a high standard to the core values of the organization is a great start.

The first step in turning team values into team performance is holding ourselves and our people accountable to our actions and atti...

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Average is Never a Team Value

It sounds ridiculous that average would be considered as a core value.  And it is ridiculous!!  So why does it show up in the behaviors of our people all too often?  Because it’s not talked about enough.

I (Cindy) believe we need to include in our messaging what average is and how every member of t...

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The Mission of Leadership

Leaders offer growth and development options because they want the best for their people. As leaders, we have a responsibility to build our people and the way our people are built shows up in our culture every day. If we build values of service, integrity, accountability, responsibility, this will s...

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