A Reputation Built on Consistency, Over Time…

To build a reputation that drives results, one that each person who ever hears about us will connect with our core values, being intentional in our approach to providing world-class service and being sure to detail why we’re willing to do it is part of our responsibility as leaders. But...

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Modeling Our Values, and Explaining Why

Even when we’ve done everything in our power to model the core values our business is built on, we can’t just assume that everyone who cares about those values will automatically connect our behaviors to the reputation we’re working to establish (or maintain). It’s up to...

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Perpetuating the Cycle

Prior to me starting at that manufacturing facility in early 1996, and for the first fifteen years I worked there, one of the largest and most reliable sources for identifying new candidates was a referral from a senior employee. As you can likely imagine, the referrals from the best employees...

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Momentum Builds Into an “Overnight Success”

If Cindy and I had only been measuring our accomplishments by reviewing our bank statements and retirement account balances, making some of the decisions we’ve been faced with over the last fifteen years would have been substantially harder. Reflecting on even the smallest personal or...

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Sustaining the Harder Right Requires Reflection

I opened Leading With A Clear Purpose with a story detailing the conversation I had with a lifelong friend who shared how one of his businesses no longer provided him with fulfillment while his other, albeit much more physically demanding, kept his heart full all the time. The business that was...

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Rallying Your Community Around Your Values

As I mentioned before, a lot of people being familiar with your company’s name and building a great reach that makes a positive impact on everyone around you are two very different things. Whether you prefer God’s chicken sandwich or two all beef patties (although I’m not so...

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Strong Values Earn Passionate Support

Someone at any level of an organization can deteriorate our relationships with long term clients as well the community around them through behavior that isn’t congruent with their core values. And regardless of their primary focus being on the people involved or the task at hand, those...

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Clear Words, Ambiguous Understanding

How many times have you provided one of your team members with directions for completing a task you needed their help getting wrapped up by a certain time, only to get something far different from what you had hoped or miss the mark entirely? I’m sure we’ve all been on both ends of...

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Without Living Our Values, It Can Go REALLY Wrong

In early December of 2001, I was just getting my feet under me in the behavior-based safety role I had accepted in the spring of that year, doing all I could to take care of our young family, and still reeling a bit from our freedom being attacked just a few months prior. I remember seeing the...

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Living, Breathing Proof

Over the course of my close to fifty years on this ball of mud, I’ve learned that the only people who truly like change are the ones who came up with the idea for the specific change that’s happening in any given moment. I can tolerate change when I have some level of control in how...

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Changes We Had to Make

As we developed more clarity around the values of the clients we enjoyed working with the most, we found more and more opportunities to challenge them on how to tie those values to nearly every conversation they had with their teams. This didn’t require major changes in what they were...

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Tying Everything to Our Values

As Cindy and I worked to learn and understand what each member of our Executive Leadership Elite Think Tank had as core values for their organizations, we had intense conversations with all of them regarding how they kept those values in front of their teams; how often and in what setting did...

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