Request for personal values

I had a great request from my friend Diane about how does one determine their personal values.  This comes from my blog post about determining your company's values.
Personal values are a funny thing, you know you have them, they guide your life, your decisions and yet it is often very difficult for us to articulate them.

I am going to reference a great thinker on this subject Peter Senge who wrote the book The Fifth Discipline about learning organizations.  I am not an expert in values or determining values, so I wanted to give all credit to Mr. Senge, Richard Ross, Bryan Smith, Charlotte Roberts, and Art Kleiner who then produced the book The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook that has exercises to their theories.

Let's get started. (This is your cue to grab a pen and paper and get thinking)
OK not to leave anything on the table - first what are examples of values anyways?
Luckily there is this fabulous thing called the internet and you can do a search for "values".  But just incase you want to go straight for the work.  Check out this link from values.com. It list a number of values, this will give you a good idea what are values, and notice which values you gravitate towards.

This next process is taken from Charlotte Roberts and the Fifth Discipline Fieldbook
1. Write down 10 values that you feel strongly about.  You will be surprised where some of these values come from - you grew up with them , or they are the values of people that you respect, or they are something that you developed over your life.

2. The next step is to narrow down these values - this is something important in the business setting because the number of values focuses the company to invest well into a few.  As a person you can have more, but try the exercise and see what the process of narrowing is like.  For example which of these values you have chosen resonate more than others.  Maybe just prioritize them?

3. Another step you might find interesting is articulating your values. Answer these questions with the values you have listed (maybe your top three).
What does that value mean exactly?
How would your life be different if those values were front and center and you lived them?
What would the trade offs be if you were to go against that value?

Give this a try - see if you find the process interesting and helpful to gain more out of living your aligned life? 

Once you know, why do we convince ourselves otherwise?

I have gone back and been reading my old sustainability books.  The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken, Confessions of a Radical Industrialist by Ray Anderson, and others.  And I read their observations on our impacts of business and human existence on the planet and am shocked by what we are doing.
But I have read these books before, I knew these impacts years ago, why does it keep shocking me?  I think in part because of the life I live I am quite removed from the visual impact of 2,562 tons of solid waste in a year from one company.  There are thousands of companies across the world, of course of various sizes, but we don't see all of the numbers added up together in daily life.

So while I know that driving my car, using water, gas, and creating waste are things I do on a small scale every day - what if I were to see this as a sum?  All totalled up would I see my impact differently and make the needed changes?
I think this would help dramatically - as I don't think it is a big deal to use my little Toyota Matrix every day for trips under 20 miles.  Heck it isn't like I am commuting 60 miles in an SUV?  But that there is the piece we have to be wary of, we can justify ourselves of anything.  And guess what - my lifestyle, my consumption, the waste I generate all have a place in that adding up of the world's impact.

What activists are trying to get at, is for ALL of us to think about the details of our impacts and make improvements.  It isn't about doing less so others can do more... it is about taking that responsibility and saying my life is adding to a really big number of global impacts and what can I do to lessen that.

Why we do it

I have started working on a white paper to articulate my vision for my work and sustainability and realized that I needed to define where I start from.  It is important to know WHY I am doing what I am doing.  WHAT I do really comes from the elements of my life and the time that I live in right now.  We have globalization, computers, blogs, fears, pollutions, community gardens and multi-national corporations. 

The world we live in today is unique and never before.  So what I do is only influenced by my passions and visions - the why....

Let’s start at a place of what is right in the world, let’s start at a place that humans have unlimited potential for happiness, for love, for creativity, and be rooted in our place in this ecosystem of where we live.  We are humans, we are animals, we are living beings and therefore our life is finite.  Yep we get to live and we also get to die, all things in life have this, look at the plants and animals and people around us, it happens every day.  

So with this finite time here, wouldn’t we want to be the greatest that we can?

This is the place that my sustainability vision is rooted.  There are so many best practices that exist out there, we have seen amazing innovations around agriculture, manufacturing, use, service and even consumption.  We have many solutions, why aren’t we putting them into practice?  There are many answers to that question, but where I see opportunity is in the space where people want to live their values through all they do.  We can get there.  What would the world look like if we all lived our values?   I sure as hell wouldn’t have a job trying to bring the principles of sustainability to the masses - and I welcome that day because that would be on amazing world. 

Seeing the forest through the trees - why the short term push is alienating

Just today the LA times reported a decline in the nation's unemployment rate to 9%, but fewer jobs are being added to the market.  The impact of the 2008 recession is still being felt. 

I have noticed this in a different way.  I have had more than a dozen conversations with friends working for various companies in various industries feeling an underlying sense of unease.  Most companies about two years ago asked their employees to start doing their work differently - budgets were cut, jobs were lost, spending stopped, benefits removed, and everyone just had to do more with less.  My family saw job losses.  Many others did as well, so for those who were left were just happy to have any income.  Well supposedly the market has improved, the economy is coming back, retailers are reporting growth in sales.  And yet inside many companies there have been no changes. 

"What is being expected of us and our output is not sustainable." "I see my company making bad decisions for short term growth... we are damaging our brand."  These are just a couple of comments I have heard.  There is a growing trend in many employees that executives at companies need to be tuned into.

There are studies after studies about why people come to work and stay at companies - compensation is only part of it.  Feeling like you are contributing, are valued and respected are high up on the list.  Also in this day and age more and more people are drawn to companies that do more than just make things or sell services.  Everyone one of us has values, we want to align these values with how we live our lives.  

When a company continues to push employees to do more with less, to cut investments, or long term thinking for short term wins,  this cuts into people's values.  The company begins to show its true colors - out for the only the financial bottom line.  This may motivate some, but for those who are passionate, there needs to be more to getting up and clocking in every day. 

I love working for the man when the man is thoughtful in its responsibility to its employees, its community, the planet, the future.  Meeting next quarter's earnings without the thought of the future, the impact of those actions will not motivate your employees to be passionate, to invest themselves in the success of the company.  

It is a tight line of staying in business - but there is more than one approach.  Choose the one where employees are valued, respected and properly resourced to be the best they can be.