Do your core values advance your strategy?

If you fail to affirm the values needed to support your strategy, it will fail from organ rejection.

THINK ON IT: Do your core values advance your strategy?

Over the last two weeks, we explored how a motivating vision statement and a clear mission statement are essential to a good strategy. Today we explore the one thing that can derail any strategy you create: your company’s core values. 

Every organization has core values. Even if they aren’t written, they are operationally in action through the company culture and the behavior of its employees.

This week’s question is whether those values–explicit or not–are aligned with your strategic intent.

This is not an academic question or one that should be dismissed lightly. Your ability to achieve the aspirations you have for your business are directly influenced by the reinforced beliefs and behaviors of your employees and partners.

As the famous saying, often erroneously attributed to Peter Drucker, puts it, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” No matter how good your strategy is, if your company fails to affirm and reward the beliefs and values needed to support it, it will fail from organ rejection. 

It’s a simple matter of the path of least resistance. People choose to do what aligns with their values, or in the case of a corporation, the values that are shared and reinforced by their peers and leaders. That’s why a company is able to accomplish only what is consistent with the core values of the environment they have created.

So, how well do your core values advance your strategy? What may be missing?

That question and whether you reshape your cultural values because of it can be life or death for your strategy.

If you want a framework to think through that, read on as a paid subscriber. (Become a paid subscriber.)

“The values of the organization are the criteria by which decisions about priorities are made.” — Clayton M. Christensen, Harvard Innovation Scholar

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