Organizational values can be tricky to identify. You and your team likely value many things -- justice, quality, collaboration, innovation, etc. If you’re not careful, you’ll create a long list of values that sounds like the values of any organization.
That’s why we base our approach on the values identification model put forth in Pat Lencioni’s book, The Advantage.
In my customer work I try to communicate powerful concepts in simple and memorable ways. One of my favorite tools to do this is using relevant and powerful quotes.
To that end I've collected scores of quotes during my career. Whittling that collection down to a "top 10" for this article was a tough exercise. Many excellent quotes didn't make the final list.
I ended up choosing this list because these are the quotes that I find most inspiring for myself and our customers. I hope you find them helpful.
For several years we’ve told our clients that there are two types of goals: process goals and results goals. For example, a process goal may be "to write one grant per month." The correlating results goal might be "to acquire $100K in new funding this year."
So, for these goals, the question is: "Which goal will help us get the result we want -- the $100K?" The correct answer is "it depends.”
I've borrowed the title for this blog entry from one of my favorite business books, Death by Meeting by Pat Lencioni. The basic idea of the book is not that you'll die by meetings. Rather, you might die from awful meetings.
As you know, awful meetings happen all the time. They take too long. They wander aimlessly. They don’t start or end on time. You’d pretty much rather be anywhere else.
A few days ago I had a conversation with a customer who needed some help figuring out how to best lead her team through the pandemic. Like so many of those that I’ve been talking with, she has a team that is worried about several things: their funding, the needs of those that they serve, and if they’ll make it to the other side of the crisis.
