Supporting Activities & Core Values (Part 5)

Core Values Template prepared by C. Hodges Consulting, LLC

It’s been three weeks since the last newsletter and I want to say THANK YOU for your patience! In that time I have relocated to Longmont, Colorado. This is an exciting transition for me and I am looking forward to building a home base here! If you happen to be in the area - reach out and let’s connect!

Now, back to the content.

So far we have walked through introductions to core values as competitive advantages and how they relate to leadership and operations within an organization.

In this week’s newsletter on Core Values as a Competitive Advantage, consider the “supporting activities” element of your business (aka the “back office”). To add context, we specifically are thinking about categories such as:

• People

• Inventory Management

• Contract Management

• Accounting & Financial Reporting

• Tax

• Legal

• Audit & Risk Management

• Overall Process Definition & Effectiveness

Same as the previous elements - this requires having a deep understanding of how your organization works. Or if you are in the early phases of building a business, think about how you intend to manage your supporting activities so that the business can deliver on its promises.

Last time I included some prompts, in case you need ideas to get you started. Here are a few sample core values (also listed in the light blue part of the table) that might be appropriate for your organization. By now, I hope that you have noticed the trends building as you see repeated themes in the core values you are listing!

• Accuracy

• Efficiency / speed

• Low-cost

• Transparency

• Reliability

For this week’s exercise:

1. Reference the table. The format provided is offered as an example for completing this week’s exercise. In the light blue rows, I listed some suggestions if you need help with identifying your organization’s potential core values (using only the values that are relevant).

2. Take a look at the list of core values that you began this exercise with.

3. Identify the core values that relate to Supporting Activities

4. Note which of these core values 1) specifically support your organization in achieving your Core Purpose, 2) align with the values and needs of your Target Customers, and 3) enable you to deliver on your brand promise.

5. Focus on the core values that receive checkmarks all the way across.

6. Apply these core values to the ways that your business does things.

Next time we focus on Corporate Social Responsibility and after that, we wrap up this series on Core Values as a Competitive Advantage!

Wishing you a great weekend,

Courtney

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P.S. - if you are interested in more reading on the topic, be sure to check out this article by McKinsey: The future of G&A: Revitalizing the heart of the organization.