Values and Ethics – Integrating Strong Principles into your Organization

Strategy Plan One

May 12, 2012

Values and Ethics

Integrating strong values and ethics into your organization can provide a solid base of principles for you, as a leader, and your staff to follow.

 

 

 

Having a strongly implemented values and ethics code in business provides your operation with a happy and healthier environment and assists with positive impacts and impressions with the public, partners and consumer bases.

Consistent values and ethics in current day practices across private and government sectors include respect, integrity, fairness, transparency, and excellence.  Many of these values are interlinked and as when one demonstrates high scores in one value, strengths in other values usually follow.

Respect

Respect must be highlighted as a core value.  Respect must be demonstrated and practiced on all levels, as people in the organization must be respected, no matter what position, organizational level, or background.  Everyone should be treated with respect and fairness, and must respect that everyone has differing personal values, strengths and qualities.  People in the organization must act and speak with respectful dialogue and should interact with other staff, partners, external stakeholders and customers in a respectful manner.  In upholding respect as a core value, engagement and collaboration can happen more frequently in open environment.

Integrity

In order to deliver honest, truthful services and at the same time undertake high level of ethical standards, an organization must strongly embed integrity into all levels of the organization.  By holding high standards in integrity, the organization and people will gain the highest levels of trust necessary for dealing in the private sector and government.  High integrity leads to high levels of confidence internally with units, team and staff and externally with partners, stakeholders and customers.

Fairness

Fairness must be integrated into operational elements and in practices with the consumer.  Whether we are developing staffing actions or determining decisions, fairness must be upheld as a key factor in decision making process.  As fairness practices build in an organization and is integrated into elements, other values such as integrity and respect improve as well.

Transparency

Transparency is the practice of providing informed truthful information internally and externally.  Strong transparency is demonstrated well you release the information and factors that are behind decision-making.  Transparency at high levels builds up confidence in staff and the organization and leads to higher integrity.

Excellence

Strive for excellence in all aspects of business, from HR practices, to customer service to the sharing of best practices across all employees and operational units.  Excellence should be embedded into the company values, but should also be strongly encouraged to staff as a personal value.

Conflict of Interest

When your own actions (personal or business) potentially constitute an advantage for you, family, friends, colleagues, partners and clients, you may be in what may be perceived or considered a real, measurable material gain.  Policies should be developed and implemented to ensure staff have the ability to at least identify and disclose any potential conflict of interest issues.  There should be mechanisms in place to assess the situation and if needed, excuse the individual from duties, or an activity.  A strong conflict of interest code / policy will build confidence and integrity.

 

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© 2012 Strategy Plan One

5 Attributes of Modern Leadership

Strategy Plan One

February 8, 2012 

Leadership has changed with time and with varying economic and environmental circumstances.   Early to mid 20^th century, leaders often invoked a militaristic or autocratic leadership approach, and to most the extent, this worked for many successful companies and big corporations.

In the current age, the workforce is better educated with more rights.  Values and ethics are important, and company and personal values and ethics need to align to achieve common goals.  In order to compete on a global scale, leaders need to motivate and influence teams of valuable employees to thrive and survive.

 

Collaboration with team members

Leadership today is obviously quite different, with globalization, competition, values and ethics and people’s rights making big impacts on how leaders lead.  The global economic climate is challenging and is multi-faceted.  New leaders today need the ability to navigate through challenging environments, with multiple layers of complexity.  A new leader must be able to collaborate with professionals adequately, and to be able to adapt quickly to changing environments.

 

Engaging others

Twenty to thirty years ago, businesses relied on manual analysis of localized information.  Today, teams and leaders must competently analysis massive amounts of global information quickly.  Where leaders lack capacity, leaders must be able to source and acquire capacity to assist in meeting organizational goals and objectives.  Leaders need to have the skill to interact with, motivate and empower team members.  Effective interaction with employees leads to better buy-in of goals and objectives.  Frequent engagement tends to make the employees and teams feel valued.

 

Activating Efficiency

Today leaders must accomplish more with fewer resources.   In order to stay competitive in global markets, leaders must stay on top with efficient operations.  Leaders must have the ability to maximize results and benefits with decreasing levels of resources.  Leaders must seek ideas for efficient operations from their teams, as these valued employees are the subject matter experts.  There are several mechanisms to implement to achieve efficiencies, from empowering employees to take the lead, to compensatory mechanisms.

 

Ability to Vision

Experienced leaders thoroughly observe and analyze the past and present.  A great leader can envisage a successful way forward.  They are able to see an end goal and objective, and pathway to achieve the objective.  Only a few have this innate ability; most develop the skill through experience in operations and management.  This valuable trait may be the result of many years of experience leading to the ability to look forward, and some of it through trial and error.  Leaders with vision understand why they are in the business and why the company’s products or services are valuable or needed by the consumer.

 

Effective Communication

Effective leadership involves a high level of rich communication.  A great leader engages with others and can communicate the vision to the team.  With powerful, transparent communications, leaders will need to be influential on others, with the ability to convince and encourage the team to follow and buy-in.  The level of acceptance is a good indicator of the leader’s communication and influential effectiveness.

 

Strategy Plan One

© 2012 Strategy Plan One

Business information, resources and tips for the entrepreneur