The first thing to look at when evaluating an organization or a team is their values. Values determine outcomes, and the extent to which you embody your values has a significant impact.
Teams that have clear values, and abide by them, achieve worthwhile results. Teams that do not embody their values—not only do they fail, but they get punished repeatedly. The alignment, or lack thereof, is palpable. (Teams that have no values do not remain teams.)
The same is true of individuals.
Recently, one of the people I work with asked me about my personal values. She is in the process of defining her own. I had actually considered posting this a couple years ago, but decided then that it wasn’t the time. Her question changed that, so here are mine:
- Health. For a long time, I felt ambivalent about being alive. It felt futile (Alexander and his ox cart driver ended up the same and all that). Futility imparts pointlessness, which can make life feel absurd. One of the inflection points for me in overcoming this sensation was to recognize that I am part of the whole, and as part of the whole, I have a role to play. Investing in my health allows me to play that role more faithfully.
- Mastery. Someone who has a “why” can bear almost any “how.” I have had many “whys” in my life, and every time I reached one, I immediately found myself adrift. I played this game for a while until I eventually lost interest. I had to spend a long time figuring out a deeper “why”, and this is it. There are many facets to mastery, but they all reduce down to mastery of self, because it’s the only mastery that endures.
- Love. When I was a kid, I was really into love. Then I went through a period where I was cynical and dismissive of it. After that, I decided that love was nice but also sort of naïve or weak. Eventually, I learned my understanding was flawed. When I set about correcting that, I realized love is the answer. That still sounds cheesy to me, but it’s also true, and has proven to be remarkably powerful—the opposite of what I believed.
There are many useful reasons to invest time in defining your values, but the one I find most useful is the efficacy with which values foster alignment. More on that another day.