Mary Marshall Once you’ve identified your culture (hopefully with three words that are easy to communicate), you need to reinforce it on a regular basis. You can use your three words to go back and fine tune the final version of your mission, vision, and values statements. … Read more
Though more and more initial contact occurs online, often the first human interaction you have with your customers is through the people who answer your phones. It’s the rare business that never has phone contact with customers, so pay attention to this aspect of your … Read more
If you’re just starting a company, it’s much easier to communicate your intentional culture to each new prospective recruit or employee. You can make it part of your employee handbook and orientation, and have it posted around the office in visible places. But, more than … Read more
Patrick Lencioni, author of several books on culture and teams, describes a fictional company in his book The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive: A Leadership Fable. In this company, the owners have described their culture in three words: “Hungry, humble, and smart.” They decided … Read more
Why does culture matter? Whether it’s intentional or not, every company has a culture. You can walk through the door and feel it almost the instant you step in. What does the lobby look like? What’s on the walls? Is it warm or cool? Clean … Read more
During the last few weeks of blog posts, we have covered the most effective ways I have found over the years to develop Mission, Vision, and Values and why that’s so important. Next, we come to the “now what?” stage. This includes who needs to … Read more
Your vision is the future you are making. It’s where you want your company to be in a given time frame. Defining your intentional vision is about looking beyond the constraints of the present and seeing what could be. In developing your vision statement, try … Read more
The importance of really clarifying your mission is that everything else flows from it. Consider your mission the foundation of your business: a shaky foundation produces a weak business. Once you know your mission, you can begin to ask and answer important strategic questions within … Read more
While values are often tagged on after mission and vision, as I’ve just said, it’s important that you start your Intentional Purpose exercise by defining your values first. Values are the foundation of your business identity and they should inform all the decisions you make. … Read more
You’ve probably seen various descriptions for these three words. I suspect they’re some of the most overused terms in business, but also the least understood. Worse, although they’re the subject of much discussion, even when they are articulated, they are rarely used as the guiding … Read more