Aspirational or inherent, how do you tell what’s what? Recognising core values can be a little tricky and often a “can’t see the forest through the trees” moment. Fortunately, our journey to recognise our central inherent characteristics was guided by our friends at The Table Group, and they did a great job!
Sitting around a large square conference table we looked at each other and thought, “where do we start”? A few subtle hints, stories and pointers from Andrew our TTG consultant and slowly but surely the wheel turned. Our team was getting excited and shared some heartfelt thoughts. Andrew’s marker pen quietly scratched the stark white piece of butcher paper, “who we were” and “how we behave” was starting to appear. The directed chit chat quickly evolved and began to bloom, statements like, “we take pride in our work”, “we do it right”, “the work our people do is awesome” became prominent. Everything complemented conversations that were based on how well we like to do things. And there it was, the value “Craftsman, take pride in what you can’t see” emerged. Andrew had meticulously extracted an inherent core value direct from our sub-conscious minds!
The next value came easy but now at times can be a contentious topic for us all to discuss, inherent or aspirational? “Humble, sweep the floor when necessary”. There’s no doubt that we are proud of what we do, and we love to talk about it. At times this can seem a little arrogant or self-serving, but I assure you we are far from being absorbed with us and only us. So occasionally, we have to watch ourselves and ensure we don’t over promote our humbleness, a term we affectionately refer to as “being arrogantly humble”.
“People with humility don’t think less of themselves, they just think about themselves less”. – Ken Blanchard
I love the above quote by Ken Blanchard, how perfect. Our version of humble – “sweep the floor when necessary”, transforms within us and is expressed as our willingness to help people when they need to be helped and do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. Nothing represents this more than what occurred during the devastating 2019 floods in Townsville, Australia. A team of our guys unable to work on site stripped off their shirts, grabbed shovels and filled hundreds of sand bags, they also fired up the BBQ and fed people that were stranded by the rising flood waters. Humble – do what needs to be done – sweep the floor when necessary.
So, that was two great values down on paper and the next one kind of snuck up on us. Straight forward quotes from our leadership team during the next session spilled out, “We don’t like lies and we don’t like people who talk crap”, “We don’t have the need or desire to bulls@*t”, “Being honest is how it is, we expect nothing less”. I guess politics isn’t in our nature, so confusing situations with half-truths just doesn’t fit, hence, we are “up-front and always honest and open”. We have at times walked away from customers if their beliefs and ideals don’t significantly align with ours. And nothing stands out more than a clash with our “up-front, be honest and open” value.
Having integrity to us includes all the above, we are up-front, we are humble and each of us in our own way is a craftsman or craftswoman. We like to serve our people and our customers with those inherent behavioural guidelines constantly in the foreground.
GRAVITIC 