Siobhan Meaker from Better Strategic Consultancy Ltd considers how values matter in both life and work and how without alignment, you risk coming seriously off course.
I snuck into University thanks in the main to a full grant for both fees and maintenance. The intake of ‘96 is possibly the last year to ever know that feeling of learning and leaving without a lifelong debt. Add to that a summer of saving some of my hard-earned library assistant wages and I flew into Exeter as fast as my velvet jacket could take me.
Deposited at random, 14 to a corridor, I think I hit pretty lucky as I still count members of the B400s of Moberly House as dear friends.
But making friends as we get older isn’t as easy as being thrown together in a Hadron Collider of poor knitwear choices and Smirnoff Mules. And as we age, it’s not just shared interests – in skipping lectures say - that connect us. Interests may put us in someone’s path, but without shared values or core beliefs about the world, you’ll never get past a cheery head nod of acknowledgement.
I don’t think I knew how important values were as a teen, but I knew that I homing pigeoned towards people who were kind, funny and thoughtful. People who laughed loudly and danced wildly to their favourite song. People who had to choose between chips or the bus home because the budget didn’t stretch to a cab AND a kebab.
When life conspired to present me with the chance to start a business, it was a values exercise that came first. The joy that our combined values mapped so closely unlocked the route to Better.
Values-based work is rich and rewarding. It challenges and pushes you forward. It unites people in a vision to achieve difficult things because it matters. But even the best of charities or organisations slip off course. And if you compromise your values in your work, you risk your purpose, your meaning, your results - and your people.
If you’ve recently read your organisational values and see a gap between the words and your experience - or perhaps you couldn’t even name them without a look on your website - it’s time to look again.
At Better, we love to help people reconnect with their purpose to improve workplace culture and unlock better results all round. We run away days, group sessions and user-engagement that is truly engaging. We’ll help you reset your course and put you on the path to achieving meaningful goals.
If you want to see if we’re for you, take a look at our values and then take it from there. We’d love to hear from you.
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