We always find it interesting that consulting firms promulgate their own, unique operational definitions.
For instance, the term ‘values’ can be found called many things including “Guiding Principles”, “Tenets of Operation”, “Virtues”, “Essential Elements”, etc. Consequently, values provide answers that describe Who are We. — Benjamin Franklin called them virtues.
Generally, they all describe answers to the basic questions:
- “Who are we?”
- “What do we value?”
- “How do we make trade-offs?”
- “What do we carry with us?”
- “What weighs us down?”
- “How will we treat each other?”
- “How will we work together (in support of our mission)?”
Methods of Conducting Business
Similarly, for our purpose, values are narrative descriptions of policies and philosophies. They provide one- or two-sentence descriptions about the principles or internal rules, laws, policies, and philosophies of the business. They tend to describe who we are.
“Values are ideals that give significance to our lives, that are reflected through the priorities we choose, and that we act on consistently and repeatedly.”
—Brian Hall, PhD, Author of the Hall-Tonna Values Inventory
However, many personal values are rarely reflected in corporate standards, temperance or cleanliness as examples. Therefore, here are the truncated values of one of the 18th-century people who strongly influenced the nature of his country, before it became a country.
Mr. Benjamin Franklin’s Virtues
Cleanliness as a Value
- TEMPERANCE: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
- SILENCE: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
- ORDER: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
- RESOLUTION: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
- FRUGALITY: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
- INDUSTRY: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
- SINCERITY: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly a method for progress.
- JUSTICE: Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
- MODERATION: Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
- CLEANLINESS: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
- TRANQUILLITY: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
- CHASTITY: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
- HUMILITY: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities every day during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
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Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
