Business Core Values and Culture – it can make the difference! - Autus Consulting
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Business Core Values and Culture – it can make the difference!

23 June, 2022

Business Core Values and Culture – it can make the difference!

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Having core company values can help you ensure each of your employees, from top leadership to entry-level, are working towards the same common goal, and share a bigger purpose.

Purpose is undeniably critical for employee satisfaction. In fact, an Imperative survey of LinkedIn members found 73% of purpose-oriented members are satisfied in their jobs, compared to 64% who are not purpose-oriented.

Purpose, and how it drives your talent, has direct and tangible business results. Companies of all sizes and industries are realising the power of inspiring employees with a strong social mission, and creating an environment that fosters purpose, shared core values and a culture that they want to grow and thrive in.

As an ex-Corporate guy, I get truly get the bigger picture mission, vision, values, strategy, goals, objectives, core values, team working, creating the right working culture etc… but I strongly believe the little guys (Start-ups, Scale-ups and SMEs) can all benefit from developing and operating to core values and cultural values/principles/commitment to create a successful business that employees want to join and stay!

All Businesses Don’t Need the Same Values

All Businesses Don't Need the Same Values

Core values are critical if you want to create a long-lasting, successful, and motivating place to work.

Consider one of American Express’s company values — “Customer Commitment”. Ideally, if you’ve had a positive experience with one of American Express’s customer service reps, you’ve seen this value displayed first-hand.

Alternatively, look at one of Google’s values — “Focus on the user and all else will follow.” Any Google search will show you they stand by their purpose to serve the user.

Now the following comes with a health warning, only joking, but I might seem for a moment that I’m going all corporate BS on you! Honestly, I’m not, stay with and see if you relate to this or have your own values that makes sense for you and your business.

At Autus we keep our core values simple. Our 3 Ts as we like to call them, form the foundation for success for both Autus and our clients.

Transparency (T1) is our first Core Value

What do we mean: We provide open, accurate and timely communications and feedback.

Why bother: Quite simply we believe creating and operating with transparency within our team and with our clients enables us to create dialogue which helps build on our 2nd core value – Trust.

Trust (T2) is our second Core Value

What do we mean: We create an inclusive environment where we empower and encourage to be all we can be.

Why bother: Quite simply we believe without trust we don’t have a successful business, happy employees, loyal clients, and everything we try to do with little or no trust will result in what we do taking longer and costing more. Read the Speed of Trust, by Stephen Covey and learn that the simple, often overlooked fact is this: work gets done with and through people. There’s nothing more impactful on people, their work, and their performance, than trust. With Trust in place, it helps build on our 3rd core value – Team.

Team (T3) is our third Core Value

What do we mean: We foster a collaborative team environment and prioritise people over profit.

Why bother: As they say, ‘Teamwork makes the Dreamwork!‘. When we say Team, we also extend that value beyond our internal colleagues and work with it in relation to our clients and partners. Now that we have transparency and trust sorted out, we just need a small miracle for our Team core value to fall into place. A client of ours Muir Slicer, who specialise in organisational development, talk about everything coming back to what they call the 4 Ps (People, Performance, Productivity, and Profit) and strongly believe the foundation of building successful teams and businesses is all about the people and creating the right conditions for teamwork. With Team in place, our business and our clients and partners businesses will continue to thrive.

Creating The Right Culture Goes Beyond Core Values

A big part of our culture is working hard but also having fun, in fact I’m surprised we didn’t make fun a core value, 2 Ts and 1 F doesn’t have the same ring to it!

In saying that as I write this blog, FUN must be included on our 10 cultural commitments – damn, we missed our obvious one. 🤔 Sometimes we don’t need to spell things out specifically but it’s vital to bring the fun or other factors into play and not forget about them if you don’t have the included specifically in our core values or cultural values/commitments etc.

For me cultural commitments are supportive of our core values and overall goals. We’ve all been in environments where we have collaborated with people that will find a problem for every solution or blames everything for why they haven’t delivered something on every excuse in the book. Equally we know if we are not focused on our customers, then ultimately the life blood of the business dries up and there is no business. Your cultural values should drive the environment that you want to create for you and your colleagues.

Our 10 cultural commitments were born from talking to our initial new employees and we created these together and they have remained with us 6 years. Don’t worry I’m not going to explain each one…but do hope it provides a little bit of insight for you to consider what your culture is like and commitments that might help you create a culture where everyone is driving in the same direction, adhering to these little principles that make the difference for the business, employees, partners and customers.

Mission, Vision, and Values help create the right culture. Of course, leadership is vital to make it all happen! Our business is all about helping to scale, grow and evolve the businesses of our customers, so it’s vital that we have a growth mindset and operate to values and cultural commitments that enables us to achieve the collective goals.

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About Autus

Autus provide Revenue Growth Platforms, Marketing & Sales Automation and Digital Marketing services to help sales and marketing personnel and teams build efficient and effective sales and marketing best practices and automate their marketing and sales processes by leveraging personalised content, various digital marketing tactics, segmentation and behaviour of their prospects and customers.

Autus recommend various products for automation, such as Active Campaign, Hubspot, Mailchimp and SharpSpring…it will vary on your requirements and budget the best option for your business.

Find out more here.

Our founder, Tom Berry, also provides selective fractional CMO services and is a member of some client boards.

Let’s keep in touch!

If our team at Autus can help advise further, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our founder, Tom Berry.

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