As your business grows and evolves, how do you make sure you don't lose what made you special in the first place?
How do you make sure you hire the right people who will strengthen your company culture, not weaken it?
How do you stay moving in the right direction, developing the right products and developing relationships with the right kind of customers?
God knows it's not easy....
But it's something I believe every company should do review regularly, especially if you're fast growing.
But even if you're running a micro-business, there is a simple exercise and workshop you could do right now that would start you on the track of uncovering what matters to you and what makes your business unique:
**
uncovering your core values.**
Your core values act as a touchstone and lens for every decision. Which employees are a good fit. Which projects are a good fit. And which would be a terrible mistake.
Understanding what you value gives you a framework for how you, and everyone who works for you, behaves.
### A SIMPLE VALUES WORKSHOP EXERCISE
First, grab the values worksheet.
There you’ll find a list of values that you can print and cut out into cards. You can also just print the worksheet and organise the values into order of importance with colours or number ratings.
**STEP ONE**
Cut out the cards and put them into three piles – _NOT IMPORTANT_, _IMPORTANT_ and _VERY IMPORTANT._
OR
Number them 1-3 with a pen (1 being not important, 2 being important and 3 being very important).
**STEP TWO**
Now take another look; which values jump out at you as the things you would never compromise on?
**STEP THREE**
Why not add a few of your own values? Is there anything that hasn’t been captured already? Add any other values to the relevant columns.
**STEP FOUR**
Discard the first two categories and focus on the _VERY IMPORTANT_ pile. You want to drill down to 3-5 core values.
**STEP FIVE**
Test the final values - how are you expressing these values right now? Are they coming through on your website or in social media? Through your customer experience, the way you treat staff and the way in which you operate?
How can you express them more clearly so that you attract like-minded customers and employees that share the way you look at the world?
