Aligning Every Area of Your Life with Your Core Values

Whether you’re a business owner or an individual, we all have certain core values by which we live. For businesses, these are more formalized and often documented to make them easier for our team, clients, and vendors to understand. In our personal lives, they may be the mantra by which we live or make decisions.

When your life and business are aligned with your core values, work isn’t just “work” anymore – it becomes fun, something that you can be passionate about. And when that happens, both your team and your clients will take notice.
 
The first step is to hone the core values – to get clarity with your messaging and what you stand for. Don’t feel like you have to get this perfect the first time, as this may go through many iterations as you clarify your vision and the desired goals.

Many people find it easiest to pick a handful of words that they align with. Sometimes your 3 to 6 words can be used to create an acronym that makes it easy to remember, while other times they describe the essence of who you are and what you envision.
 
For a small business in the beginning, these may be mainly the conception of the owner or a small group on the Admin Executive Team. As the business grows, you can incorporate your team and help them refine and be part of the renewed focus and direction of the company. This latter phase is a milestone I hope every business owner looks forward to!
 
Along this journey, it is vital that your core values become incorporated into everything you do.  Here are some examples I have shared with business owners in the last two weeks on how to incorporate their core values into their day to day operations.

Encourage Your Team to Innovate and Streamline 

One of our core values is innovation, and this is something we encourage our team to practice – but we give them a framework to practice it within.

A vital part of getting your team to truly think this way and incorporate it in their daily routine is to include references to it, not just on a wall hanging, but in many of their step-by-step‘s. This is done through what they do as a team, for our clients, and as a monthly check and balance of how we can be better.

Back in my law firm days, this meant incorporating a step in the policies and procedures from the legal team to take five minutes and reflect back on what could be done to make a process better. For instance, this could be done after a deposition, a mediation, or a trial.

We added a step indicating, “the legal team shall spend at least five minutes conferring on how we could make the process better, and where we could improve the communication and process for the next time we do this step.” 

Monthly, this can also be a KPI where we ask, “have you innovated at least one change a week (or one change a month) to improve and streamline how we do things?”

Inspire Excellence in Everything We Do

There are opportunities to incorporate reminders to strive for Excellence into everything the team does.

It could be an additional step to processes and checklists like “confirm the integrity of the document or project by having a second set of eyes review for any typos, or grammatical issues to ensure the highest level of excellence in our work product each and every time.” 

It could be included as part of a weekly or monthly check-in where we ask the team to take 10 minutes to contemplate, “Is this my best and how can I make it better so that we achieve excellence and all that we do?”  By allowing your team to take pride in their work product, rather than always hustle for the quickest product possible you will send a marketing message to the world that you care deeply about what you create on behalf of your clients.

It could be encouraged as part of our ongoing “Catch each other doing things right” where the team gives shout-outs to each other for embodying Excellence! 

There are so many ways to thread the core values of excellence, A+ work and Top Quality into every part of the business.

Take Customer Service to the Next Level

Another common core value is customer service. Taking time to focus on your clients and their experience with your company is vital to tapping into what they ultimately want.

Customer Service and Hospitality are what allow you to craft an experience that is memorable, one that will keep them coming back again and again. It’s also what will lead them to be raving fans about what you do!

With this core value in mind, we can look at our workflows from A-to-Z and layer in ways we can give our clients that incredible experience.

This may mean setting up an automated response that is triggered whenever we receive some key information/discovery from our client. Taking the time to put an immediate email in place that acknowledges receipt and shows appreciation that they took the time to do their part of the work, and that we will now do ours, can make a huge difference in your client’s experience. This doesn’t have to be long; it could be a two-sentence email such as, “Thank you so much for getting this information to us as requested. Our team will now review and take action.” It might seem small, but it builds trust and security by letting your client know that you’re on top of things.

Incorporating this core value into the workflow could also take the form of a phone call or two at milestones within the process. This is a way to simply reach out to the client and let them know the last two things that have been done on their matter and the next two things coming up. This ensures that they feel like they’re part of the process and lets them know that things are progressing forward.

This small little touch with a personalized phone call, even if you only leave a voicemail message, can be that reassurance they need that they made the right choice in working with your company. This $5 cost to the business is actually more powerful than any $50 marketing spend. 

We can also establish Client Happiness Coordinators, Dream Makers, Client Liaison Specialists, and other individuals on our team. These are people whose purpose it is to ensure that your client experience is personalized, that it gives the “wow” factor to let them know we care about them and their individualized needs.
 
Whatever your core values may be, there always opportunities to incorporate them into what you do every single day. There are simple but effective ways to remind your team that your orchestrated processes are designed to align your core values with the service you provide. This also helps to ensure that your team is equipped to produce work product that they can be proud of, ensuring that they are more fulfilled and happier every single day.

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