#545 Company Values

The marketing minute is a shorter version of the popular More than a Few Words podcast.  Instead of a conversation with a marketing professional, host Lorraine Ball shares a quick tip to start you on your day as a business owner.

What's important to you as a company? What do you value? It's natural in a small business for the values of a company to be driven by the owner, but if your employees don't embrace those values, your company won't reflect them.

Start with a brainstorm session to clarify your values, everyone in the company shares what they think the company is about, and they share the characteristics that they would like to see. You may end up with a pretty long list and the trick is to revise it and revise it until you come up with just a few phrases that really capture the essence of your organization. To be effective, the values can't be just buzzwords and each value should have a short definition of what that value means to you.

You'll know you have the right values for your organization if they're front and center as you're hiring. Having those well defined values give you the criteria to evaluate potential employees. Candidates who don't demonstrate those values won't be a good fit for your team.