Why do sound business values help you achieve freedom in your business?
I mentioned in the previous article how Business Competencies and Business values have direct impact on the financial results you achieve. Business competencies tie in to the acronym LUCK, which connects with the qualities needed most to be a successful CEO of your small business.
What other values have a direct impact on the financial results you achieve?
Resilience
I saw a study a few years back (don’t remember the name sorry) which had surveyed a lot of the world’s best CEOs. Close to 85% of them were from a dysfunctional personal background. The organisers of this survey thought this was a very interesting result. They concluded that one of the most important aspects this gave the CEOs critical for their roles was resilience. And because of their backgrounds, these people were ahead of the game. They had learnt resilience early in life, giving them more experience in dealing with issues that created challenge.
The ability to deal with issues that create challenge for a business owner is critical. We all know that issues come at us from left field from time to time. Being able to roll with the punches helps your bottom line because there is less of an impact because of the lower stress level. Prompt decision making and higher determination to regroup following temporary defeat is advantageous.
Business Values
There are many business values that people are guided by, which tend to reflect their personal values. On the diagram below, I have attempted to bring just one word to communicate values that might be thought of as umbrella terms (as well as values in their own right.)
Honour includes honour itself, integrity, honesty and all of those other really important values needed to be a worthy person. Courage is listed next to honour. Winston Churchill said, ‘Courage is the first of all human qualities because it is the one that guarantees all of the others.’ Honour has similar qualities in relation to its impact on other values. Both of these together, are powerful.
Compassion also includes the values of being supportive, non judgmental, giving etc. Compassion creates revenue for your business for the simple reason that it is one of the main qualities that allows an ability to understand other’s perspectives. To do this makes one a better listener, questioner and influencer. These three factors, regardless of business type, improve revenue.
Loyalty is one of the values that in my opinion creates the most revenue for a business. Based in trust and built over time, it also tends to guarantee the ability to have real conversations whenever service levels are less than desired. If someone is not loyal, they tend to not even bother with the conversation, instead simply voting with their feet. Loyalty towards a person can in turn result in a customer affording you the opportunity to ‘put something right’ when one is human and not perfect. This is very valuable from an earnings perspective – it is so much cheaper to keep a customer than find a new one. Being loyal towards a customer or business associate tends to create opportunities for discounts and other such special offers. This tends to be from the result of an increased sense of reciprocity.
On the diagram, you will see that it is the combination of sound business values (whatever your own specific ones may be within the umbrella terms) and the core business competencies which then turns into the ability to have a high level of influence within your business. Influence is gold. It is the best door opener for any business owner.
Once you have mastered influence with clients, suppliers, your team, advisors, etc the next result is leverage and eventually, freedom from your business. Once you have freedom, you can turn up to work on the days that you want to do so – not because you have to do so. And that is where the fun really starts to begin.
Remembering the lessons learned to get to the leverage and freedom stages, it is the combination of business values and core competencies that will also keep you there.
Please contact me here if you would like some assistance in applying any of this in practice.