The Foundation of Business Transformation
After decades of working with hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals, the development of the Core Values Index revealed three fundamental truths. These three basic propositions must be understood and accepted, or we leave ourselves vulnerable to blaming our lack of success on circumstances or on people we cannot control.
If we accept that current frustrations and failures are due to our lack of understanding of ourselves, our teams, and the people we work with, we can turn immediately from frustration and fear and begin to solve the problems in front of us. These propositions form the bedrock of the entire Core Values Index system.
Proposition One: All Business Problems Are People Problems
All business problems are people problems. All solutions to business challenges are people-based solutions. This may seem like a bold statement, but consider it carefully. Is insufficient cash flow a financial problem? Yes. But is insufficient cash flow caused by a lack of planning? Yes. Poor sales training? Yes. Over-active purchasing departments? Greed? Fear of failure? Fear of success? Yes to all of these.
Cash flow problems are not simply financial problems; they are leadership problems, organizational problems—people problems. Behind every spreadsheet showing declining revenue, behind every operational inefficiency, behind every strategic misstep, you will find people making decisions, avoiding decisions, in conflict, or simply misaligned with their roles.
Business problems are core values challenges and comfort level challenges. The keys to success in business mostly involve the leader’s ability to stretch outside of their emotional and social comfort zones to make new effective decisions. The challenges lie in questions like: How much push is too much? How demanding should I be? Is this a time for compassion and patience, or for swift corrective action?
The Rationalizations That Reveal People Problems
In thirty years of business leadership and consulting, certain phrases spoken by prospective clients consistently identify people problems disguised as other issues. One potential client said, “All I need is $500,000 to get me through this time.” Another said, “When I get the next big exciting contract I’ll finally be able to…” Others claim, “If I could just find a bank that wasn’t so stuck in the past…”
Every time these kinds of “if only” scenarios appear, they reveal a client who will need to face personal change and learn how to be a change agent within their own team. The money, the contract, the bank—these are not the real obstacles. The real obstacles are internal.
An equally telling list of excuses sounds like this: “I can’t seem to get these people to realize…” or “I’m putting in eighteen-hour days, but…” or “We’re like one big family here.” These types of excuses indicate a lack of boundaries, rude behavior, friction in the ranks, and unmotivated leaders and followers. These are people problems of the worst kind, the kind that steal energy away from accomplishing goals and completing projects.
Proposition Two: What We Don’t Know About Ourselves Controls Our Lives
It is the habits, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and fears that each of us has—that we have not faced or that we are not aware of—that control our actions and responses. Why? Because we can only make conscious choices about things we are conscious of. If we are not aware of a specific fear, we cannot decide to master it.
Self-knowledge is the foundation of leadership, top performance, and high contribution. If we do not know and understand the ineffective ways we handle the variety of people and situations in our life, if we are not willing to change the attitudes and beliefs that motivate these ineffective behaviors, if we are not aware of the beliefs we keep locked away supposedly out of sight—we are controlled by these things.
We find ourselves responding to a boss or a peer or an employee just like we used to respond to our father or mother or sibling. All of us live to some degree in this unconscious state, unaware of the stimulus and response patterns of our lives. The power of any leader derives directly from knowledge of these patterns and a willingness to become ever more conscious of them.
Breaking Free from Unconscious Patterns
To the degree that we know ourselves and remain conscious of the beliefs and attitudes that control our behavior patterns, we are in control of our own lives. We are psychologically awake. We are able to make conscious choices. We can ask ourselves “What is the most effective response?” rather than simply react out of old personality scripts or comfortable patterns.
If we are not conscious of a negative attitude that is limiting our performance, we are not able to decide to think differently. If we don’t learn to think and believe differently, we will not act differently, and we will never get different results. This is why the Core Values Index begins every client relationship by having each employee take the assessment—to create accountability for the successes and failures of each person.
It also helps each participant understand what their role is, or should be, so they can achieve success as an individual and as a team member. To achieve this success, all employees and managers must understand who they are and what they are at the core values level. The challenge then is to give each person a job assignment that aligns with their Core Values Nature.
Proposition Three: What We Don’t Know About Others Dictates Team Success
Some of us are reasonably self-aware. But if we don’t know and sufficiently understand the people we interact with in the workplace, our communications will falter. Our goals and objectives will be overshadowed by battles for control. General misunderstandings will reduce productivity in our team.
If we can’t learn to change our personal strategies to fit the situations and the people involved, our success will be limited. We each have a unique filter through which we view life, and we each have a different perspective and a different sense of purpose, a different capacity to be a certain kind of presence in our world.
The nature of this difference also causes each of us to perceive realities differently, to understand in different ways, and to express our understanding differently. The attempt with the Core Values Index and its various applications is to provide one central backbone upon which we can all hang our collective hats.
The Transformative Power of Understanding
Discovering the ability to shift from one communication style to another that better serves the person we are communicating with is a skill that delivers immeasurable improvement in effectiveness for both parties. If we can understand that others learn differently than we do, that others think differently, observe through different filters, participate with different motivations, act from different impulses, contribute different energy, hold different perspectives, and are wired from birth with different essential modes of operation—this understanding will create a new foundation for personal achievement and success.
What we don’t know about ourselves limits our ability to work with others in a team and frustrates us in our desire to move forward. We have to continuously increase the understanding of our basic nature and the behaviors we practice, due to our innate values, in order to be successful and find fulfillment in our work.
Moving Beyond Personality to Core Nature
To gain the most from this system, it is important to shift from thinking about the Core Values Index as just another personality test. Let it lead you into a deeper understanding of your deepest, most intrinsic, and unchanging nature.
This information is not about your adapted personality. It is about your basic spiritual nature, your innate identity and deepest tendencies—how and why you choose to experience life, how you are motivated by your very nature to BE in the room, at work, and with the people who participate in your social life.
We must also become aware of the personality and fear-based reactions that we rely upon and have well-rationalized in our adult life. These patterns of behavior, our learned adaptive behaviors, represent only a warped version of our Real Core Values Nature. Learning to see this, and learning how to make more conscious choices about our reactions to certain kinds of people in certain circumstances, provides a whole new world of conscious choices.
Putting the Propositions to Work
These three basic propositions must be understood and accepted if we wish to create lasting change in our businesses and our lives. When we stop looking for external solutions to internal problems, when we take responsibility for our own patterns and blind spots, and when we invest in truly understanding the people around us, transformation becomes possible.
This is the power offered by the Core Values Index—not just as an assessment, but as a complete system for understanding the human dynamics that drive every business outcome. Because at the end of the day, every business problem is a people problem, and every solution begins with understanding people at their core.
Discover Your Core Values Nature
Ready to understand how these three propositions apply to your life and work? Take the Core Values Index and discover your unchanging nature. Your comprehensive 17-page report will reveal how you naturally contribute, where your blind spots may lie, and how to work more effectively with others.