{"id":546,"date":"2017-06-05T11:17:18","date_gmt":"2017-06-05T11:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.isb.edu\/centre-for-family-enterprise\/?p=546"},"modified":"2025-12-31T09:41:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T09:41:10","slug":"family-business-how-do-values-fit-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.isb.edu\/centre-for-family-enterprise\/2017\/06\/05\/family-business-how-do-values-fit-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Family Business: How do Values Fit In?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Business people often have a tendency to concentrate so much on their day-to-day business that they end up losing sight of some pretty important basic matters, like their values. Values form the unconscious base of everything we do, and they impact so many of our regular decisions without us even realizing it.<\/p>\n<p>A business\u2019s values usually reflect those of the owners, executives and leadership. Values are always important, but they\u2019re usually running in the background and aren\u2019t really noticed, until there\u2019s a clash somewhere along the line. Critical time to examine them is when anticipating a change in leadership (management and\/or ownership).<\/p>\n<p>A business built on hard work, collaboration and diversity won\u2019t likely do well if the incoming leadership espouses none of those same core principles. People talk about alignment a lot these days, and rightly so. What they don\u2019t always mention is that the alignment of values is really at the base of much of this work.<\/p>\n<p>Family Values vs. Business Values<\/p>\n<p>Now, you may be inclined to believe that business values should guide the business, while family values should just \u201cstay in the family\u201d and should never have an influence on how the business operates.<\/p>\n<p>I would suggest that this type of thinking is not conducive to long-term success. When a family owns and leads a business, then that family\u2019s values are important for the business. There doesn\u2019t necessarily need to be a 100% overlap in family values and business values, but the more overlap the better, and ideally you want as much overlap as possible.<\/p>\n<p>How Do We Get This Right? Lots of consultants who work with businesses have tools and exercises that they use with teams in the business, to help them discover and align around key values for the business.<\/p>\n<p>If your business has already done that, that\u2019s great. But, please don\u2019t stop there. And, please resist the temptation to bring the results of that business values work to a session on the family\u2019s values.<\/p>\n<p><em>Source: Legler, Steve., June 3, 2017; http:\/\/shiftyourfamilybusiness.com\/2017\/06\/03\/family-business-values-fit\/#.WTU6UeuGPIU<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Business people often have a tendency to concentrate so much on their day-to-day business that they end up losing sight of some pretty important basic matters, like their values. Values form the unconscious base of everything we do, and they impact so many of our regular decisions without us even realizing it. A business\u2019s values [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Family Business: How do Values Fit In? - Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.isb.edu\/centre-for-family-enterprise\/2017\/06\/05\/family-business-how-do-values-fit-in\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Family Business: How do Values Fit In? - Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Business people often have a tendency to concentrate so much on their day-to-day business that they end up losing sight of some pretty important basic matters, like their values. Values form the unconscious base of everything we do, and they impact so many of our regular decisions without us even realizing it. 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