I usually go straight to the point, but this time, I will allow myself to make a small detour. 2+ years ago I was sitting at my desk and decided to transform my life... Little did I know that this was going to require a huge amount of work. Why? Because my life is bigger than me; it's my family, my business, my co-workers, my community, basically everything that revolves around me. After a few months in, I said to myself, if I want to do this properly, I need a plan.
My plan first consisted of finding my purpose (the WHY). I did this by creating a 20-year personal vision on 1 page using the "BE-DO-HAVE" model. So, on a one-pager quadrant, 12 lines of text, I am able to see what matters the most to me and what fulfills my life. This one-pager keeps my futuristic brain grounded, focused, and disciplined.
What I came to realize is that in 20 years,
I want to BE relevant (meaning I need to continuously learn);
I want to DO this by helping others (meaning the need to transfer knowledge for human potential), and
I want to HAVE my health (meaning I need to eat well and exercise if I want to be there for my family and people who needs me)
Secondly, I said to myself that I needed some rules that defined the winning formula to support this next level transformation. I did this by handpicking behaviors that identifies the type of environment I want to be associated with.
Here are my 10 Core Values:
Agile
Positive
Honesty
Courage
Influence
Innovation
Teamwork
Collaboration
Communication
Common Sense
So, with this clear vision set on how I saw my life transforming, now I needed to execute it. As the famous quote goes by "Vision Without Execution Is Just Hallucination". I decided to develop a culture deck as the medium to communicate the Core Values to set the context moving forward.
This 33-page company culture deck is meant to communicate the vision and to set the expectations:
How our Core Values will drive expectations in people
How we should all be Leaders that deliver results
How we can enable transparent context to always understand the purpose
How we can empower our people via a flat structure to avoid unnecessary control How we can create a challenging environment and focusing on skillsets as our way to invest in our people
After 2+ years, the Core Values are still alive and well positioned in our day to day operations. We discussed them often and it helps to maneuver sticky situations. These important steps were required to get us all aligned to transform the organization to the next level.
Charles Gervais, President Missing Link Technologies Ltd.
Dare To Transform, Core Values, The WHY