Values vs. Practices

When you are looking at what needs to change in your organization, it's helpful to look at what practices you are unwilling to change. Those may be the ones that most need changing.

Jim Collins, author of the bestselling Good to Great and Built to Last, talks about identifying your company's core values and the importance of protecting them. He also talks about companies that have mistaken traditional practices for values. There is a difference.

Your core value may be providing excellent customer service, and the associated practice may be responding to customer's email inquiries within two hours. When you are evaluating what can change in your business practices, it's tempting to say that you cannot change the two-hour response policy because it is a core value. The response time isn't the core value. It's just a business practice and should be open to change, if needed, especially if it no longer serves the core value.

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