Business owners are faced with making tough decisions every day. The stressful thing about moving forward is the uncertainty around the fact that we aren’t sure if our decision is the right one. Are you a business owner making decisions without a tool to hold those decisions up to?
The question is what influences your decisions? Is it money? Fame? Family? Ego? What is it? Ask yourself honestly what drives your decision making process.
Chances are you have an internal mechanism inside of you that helps guide your decisions. For now, we will call it your “gut”. How do we take that internal mechanism and create something external that not only guides your decisions as a business owner but also guides your team’s decision’s as well. Welcome to values based decision making.
Values based decision making is a process of creating a set of standards with which to filter important life and business decisions. You may have a set of values personally and professionally and hopefully they are congruent with each other.
Let’s say that you are in a meeting and you are presented with an “opportunity”. You’re “gut” may tell you to jump on the opportunity. There’s a time and place for making “gut” decisions but you shouldn’t make it a habit of making decisions that way. Having a set of values in place for your business will allow you to discern if the opportunity will truly fit within your organization’s mission.
Let’s say the opportunity is an outside sales floor that would really be able to boost the sales of your business. Let’s say this sales floor has a reputation for closing leads extremely hard and aggressively. Increasing sales for your business is a good thing right? What if one of your company values is treating clients with respect or to have a high level of customer service? Is this opportunity the right fit? Probably not.
Values let you discern between opportunities and distractions. The idea may be a good one…for somebody else.
What does your company value? When was the last time you made a decision based on your personal or professional values? If you have ever found yourself chasing dollars in your business doing things that you know you shouldn’t be doing, it’s time to create a set of values for your business so that you can use your time effectively and serve the market as you were meant to.
How have you used values to make decisions?
Very well said!