Leadership, Culture, & Values!

I am scheduled to speak this week-end at a leadership conference in Washington DC at a 100 + members faith-based organization. My core speech will be about leadership development, corporate culture, and values. My goal is to inspire members of this organization to engage themselves and other members in continuing self-directed leadership education, and to passionately create a culture of added values to the benefit of their community.

I am indebted to the Life Leadership Company to have included authors Randy Ross, and David Salyers’ book Remarkable! as part of my recent leadership subscription. I will be using their ideas on cultural transformation as well as New York Times best selling authors Orrin Woodward and Chris Brady’s book Launching a Leadership Revolution to define leadership.

What can we do to craft a culture where we believe the very best in our people and call out the very best from our people? That’s the question the authors are asking in their remarkable book understanding trust as a key factor for progress.

¨Where trust is high, resistance is low. Therefore, change and progress come quickly. Conversely, where trust is low, resistance is high. Therefore, change and progress come slowly¨, they said.

Our values define us. They find expressions in our daily decisions. We see the world through our unique lens, which are crafted by the prioritization of certain values.

What we need to do reach our full potential is to allow our values to drive our business. We need to define, articulate, and embody our values. The more our values are in alignment as a team, the more value we can create for everyone. Unity is a powerful in driving productivity.

Serving is about creating value for and not simply seeking to extract value from every encounter, endeavor, and relationship.

Relationship implies a desire to stay engaged with others. Nothing of long-lasting positive value ever happens by force.

Ross & Salyers define culture as “the collective expression of the values, thoughts and behaviors that individuals bring to the organization.”

Every teams or organizations have a culture. We can have a culture by design or by default. The only real competitive advantage any organization has is the culture that it fosters.

Culture is the single most important factor in the success of any organization and must be the highest priority of leadership

A company’s culture is its greatest competitive advantage, and will either multiply a company efforts, or divide both its performance and its people.

Ross & Salyers said “the most important issue facing any business it to intentionally craft a Remarkable! Culture of value creation. Everything else is secondary. “

We develop a sense of satisfaction when we understand who we are and how we can best bring value to every relationship and every endeavor we invest ourselves in.

The authors argue that “strong organizations always put people ahead of profits because they know that if you do right by your people – internally and externally – then the profits will follow.”

Great organizations create powerful relationships through the superior value they bring to the marketplace.

Each time we make a decision; there is a short term and a long term dimension that must be considered. Many decisions have a short term gain but carry a long term loss; while other decisions may have a short term loss, but ensure a long term gain. (Rooss & Salyers)

The impact of culture in any organization cannot be overstated. The culture is the single most important factor in the success of any organization and must be the highest priority of leadership.

I am glad to be invited to add value and to invest my talents and speaking ability in this faith-based organization leadership retreat in Washington DC. As discussed with the event planner, leadership is not acquired in a day, but is developed daily.

This will be a commencement. My call for action is to have potential leaders of this organization engaged in our self-directed continuing corporate leadership education system for the upcoming 6 months.

God bless,

Roosevelt