3 Ways to Check That Your Business Values Are Being Executed

This article comes from Entrepreneur.

3 Ways to Check That Your Business Values Are Being Executed

Here are three things you can do right now to check on how your values are being lived by everyone in your organization:

1. Look for opportunities, not excuses.

Consider the most recognizable name in health care: the Mayo Clinic. On the May 24, 2018, edition of the syndicated radio show Marketplace, Dr. John Noseworthy, president, and CEO of the Mayo Clinic talked about “entrepreneurial plans” for a hospital that opened in 1889, so it doesn’t get stuck in its story for its next century in business.

He encourages physicians and scientists to be entrepreneurs and to collaborate as teams to solve problems without compromising the bond between physician and patient. He’s open to artificial intelligence. And he doesn’t see a threat in Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, and Berkshire Hathaway potentially getting into the health-care field.

He sees it as an opportunity: “We don’t have a high-quality, sustainable, affordable health-care system in America,” he said on the show. “And folks are looking at that and saying, ‘What could I bring to that?’ Of course, Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, and Berkshire Hathaway can bring capital, logistics, know-how, technology, price transparency, and they’ve reached out to us and we’ve talked with them about what the opportunities are, and I think there are great opportunities there.”

2. Visit with your people — walk around!

When was the last time you walked around your offices — every part of them — to learn, engage, understand? I’m talking about the server rooms and shipping, manufacturing and accounting, sales and marketing, and IT and inventory. Try it out.

Have the team leaders show you around and do the following:

• Look for things going right — and what you don’t understand
• Ask questions to learn
• Make sure you keep doing it to maintain that connection to your story

Catherine Monson understands the power these visits have to reinforce the values you hold and drive them through the culture of your business. She was hired to be CEO of Fastsigns International in 2008 by the private equity firm that bought the company from the founder.

She felt blessed to follow in that founder’s footsteps but noted he had some different philosophies: He rarely went out in the field visiting franchisees, or what some leaders call MBWA — Management By Walking Around.

3. Connect with the people who do the work.

Anyone who’s seen an episode of Undercover Boss, in which CEOs go undercover at their own companies to do the lowest-paying jobs, understands how easy it is to get disconnected as your company grows. So make it a point to reconnect and ensure your people aren’t stuck in their stories.

If you don’t ask, you might still see the results — good and bad — but you’ll never understand the mindset of the people creating those results.

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