I grew up in a rural area, about ten miles outside the town the high school I graduated from was located. I used to joke during the hundreds of new hire orientation sessions I did over the years that my hometown only had two stop signs, and we rarely used those. The majority of the groups I was part...

Just a few months before accepting the position I started immediately after getting married, I interviewed for a role with responsibility for the behavior-based safety process that I had been involved with for a year or so prior on a volunteer basis. In addition to performing the observations that p...

I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve heard folks reference different individuals - in business, in politicks, or any other walk of life - as natural-born leaders. I think the most humorous anecdote I ever heard around that idea was when John Maxwell mentioned being asked if leaders are born or...

If you’ve been disciplined enough to consistently (and fanatically) follow the simple framework for instilling the core values you’ve defined into your organization’s culture, I have no doubt that your grass is at least starting to be incredibly green - to anyone on either side of the fence. And the...

Let’s consider Gino Wickman’s statement again: “Once they’re defined, you must hire, fire, review, reward, and recognize people based on these core values. This is how to build a thriving culture around them.” If we’re willing to take this to heart and consistently act on everything according to our...

Having detailed why a framework for building the foundation of our organizations around our core values is so important and now having three simple steps in laid out to serve as the framework - consistent communication, keeping our values visible all the time, and intentionally weaving them into eve...

Assuming you’ve taken to heart the idea of consistency trumping intensity and the importance of wearing our values on our sleeves, even if you don’t feel like you quite built either completely into your routine yet, we’re at a great place. Each are critical role pieces in the framework for laying a ...

I remember hearing a story about an old man who’s wife was in tears. He reluctantly asked what was wrong and she replied that he clearly didn’t love her any more because it had been years since he told her so. He scoffed and said, “I told you that I loved you when we got married. I’ll let you know i...

Let’s assume there’s a gap between the impact we want to make by living out our core values and the impact that’s actually being made through our team’s actions. Even if that gap is incredibly small, there’s always room for improvement - assuming we’ve done the work to solicit the kind of alliance f...

Developing clarity around the specific impact we want to have on everyone we’re serving through our core values will require focus. Building strong alliances with trusted sources we can count on to provide us with candid feedback on how we are (or aren’t) living up to those values takes time and inc...

As with so many of companies “that more than 80% published an official set of corporate values on their website” having definitions posts - or even detailing a picture of what we want those values to mean - makes little impact if that’s not what we’re actually known for. Wearing a He-Man costume at ...

Early on in this process as we looked at what happens when foundational values aren’t in place (and a few times since), I referenced an article from MITSloan Management Review called “When It Comes to Culture, Does Your Company Walk the Talk?”, where the authors shared this about how frequently comp...