As you can imagine, your values influence many of your decisions in life. This is especially true when running a business. In some cases, being driven by your values is a positive thing. However, what many business owners don’t appreciate is the financial implications involved when a value is taken from your personal world and applied to your business. Values have the potential to impact your company more than you might realise.

Tweet: “Values have the potential to impact your company more than you might realise” – @BizCoachRay

An Example of Values in Action
Let’s say Joe who is a person who is a natural bargain hunter. He values cheaper products and likes to think that in whatever he purchases, he has to get it at a bargain. However, he’s running a company that sells premium products – which need a high price point.

After finding these products and securing them for the best possible price (i.e. the lowest), he’s now struggling to understand why his customers would pay premium amounts of money for them – despite the fact that they are high-quality items. Being unable to reconcile his personal values with his business acumen, he then sells his products from a price-driven viewpoint – rather than focusing on the value they add.

How Can Values Impact Your Business?
Our core values are like a finely-tuned code of conduct. They dictate the way in which we respond to challenges in our lives, and they help us to make many of our decisions in life – including business decisions.

• Value customer service. If you value excellent customer service from other companies, it’s likely that you’ll put emphasis on the level of customer service your own business offers your clients. You’d probably invest resources into ensuring your customers felt valued and supported by your company.
• Value people. If you’ve worked for others in the past, and liked to feel valued by your employer, it’s likely you’ll focus on making your own employees feel valued. You’ll probably place high priority on staff retention and levels of employee happiness.
• Value administration. If you value order, organisation and strategy in your personal life, it’s likely this will translate into your company environment. You’ll invest heavily into creating processes, company ethos and business plans.

Of course, there are several other areas where your values may affect how you run your business – which can have either positive or negative impact.

Benefiting or Negatively Impacting Your Business?
Values are only a problem when they start to have negative impact on your company. This problem is even more serious if you’re unable to identify that this is happening. Working with a business advisor or similar expert can help you to ascertain how your personal views and priorities are shaping your company – and most importantly, whether that’s a good thing or not.

Don’t let your values destroy your business.