You've Got to Stand for Something, or You'll Fall for Anything...

I've had quite a few conversations recently with executives across the insurance, banking and broader financial services world recently and one of the key themes that keeps emerging is that organizations are redefining the values of their companies and establishing desired behaviors even as part of the performance review cycle. The economic collapse and financial downturn has driven home the message that not only is 'what' we attain important but so too is 'how' we attain it.

While I suppose that this could in fact seem like common sense what's interesting to me is that it is a reminder to all of us to take a step back and think about our own personal values. What is it that we ultimately stand for and who ultimately do we want to be? Recently I delivered a speech on behalf of The Mind Gym (www.themindgym.com ) for BBC Worldwide at the Liverpool Convention Center about creating and maintaining a 'personal' or 'individual' brand and in which we established that values are the things that ultimately provide direction for our lives. While who we are is a combination of many things including our own individual talents, our values give us the highway to travel on.

For example take two people with exactly the same talent of running, Brooke and Ryan. They each run 6:00 minute miles, cover a marathon in 2:40:00 and can do a 100-miler in 20:00:00. They both have an incredible talent for running, in fact, they even have the same running coach. Now Brooke values modesty, helping others, and time with his family. Ryan on the other hand values travel, adventure, and financial security.

Brooke becomes a running coach in his local community and raises money for charity through various running events. Ryan becomes a sponsored professional runner and travels around the world competing in various high profile events. There's no right answer here but simply an illustration of how values create movement and direction.

Amidst an avalanche of turmoil across the United States and here in the UK I can't help but immediately jump to values as the essence of the break down. I'd be curious to sit whoever is responsible for the News of the World phone hacking scandal down and make them list out their core values. I have a feeling that 'invading personal privacy for financial reward' wouldn't make the top 10. I have a feeling that if we made the idle youth here in the UK list their values that they wouldn't list violence, destruction of property, and financial gain at the expense of others as their 1,2, and 3.

Now, I'm not so puritanical as to think that life isn't such a strong wind that our values don't get tugged at from time to time, if not on a daily basis, but if we remind ourselves of what they are then we are so that much less likely to get blown in the wrong direction.

Take a brief time out, write down your values, and remember them when the wind starts to pick up.

In the meantime, good running.

Rp