Have you ever thought about how your business can drive change? As a business owner, we have an amazing opportunity to use our business to create the change we want to see in the world. By understanding your core business values, you can find causes that align with your values. The next step? Take action that drive results: find ways to incorporate giving to those organizations or causes that are meaningful to you and your community.
Meaningful Actions for Sustainable Growth
You’re not just a business owner. You are a consumer too. And part of a global shift in the expectations of customers, employees, partners, governments, and investors. Your core values drive the decisions you make and carry through to your business, whether you realize it or not. Uncover the conscious and subconscious evaluations to discover the things that matter most to you. Once defined, these values help serve intended goals and influence priorities. You may find that personal growth and ethical business practices take precedence over profit.
Today, individual core values can pressure companies to act with integrity and look to ways to benefit humanity. By making a gradual cultural transformation in your company, your core values can be better aligned with your consumers, too. This shift in thinking is also beneficial for more efficient operations and lower overall business costs. Using your core values to tackle global challenges leads to innovation and new business models for sustainable growth along with economic advantages. It’s time to take the first steps.
Knowing Your Core Values
You’ll need to think about how you want to invest in the future. Do you want to grow your company to provide more local jobs, offer opportunities for continuing education to upskill employees, donate products or services to those in need, or develop a program to repurpose work materials? Will you employ better technology to maintain legal compliance to support human rights, anti-corruption, and health and safety issues?
Whatever you choose, sustainable practices are a long-term investment, especially if you want them to be a part of company culture. Over time, clients with similar values will trust and believe your business is about more than profit – a purpose drives your decision making. And the dedication to your purpose leads to a business model for sustainable growth. By embracing a new attitude, the environmental and financial benefits will follow.
Sustainable Growth in Action
You may have noticed lately that large companies are going beyond required government regulations to be environmentally conscious. Customers are demanding it, which impacts their bottom line.
The vast footprint these companies make on the environment and economy has made it their responsibility to move away from non-renewable and unsustainable practices. Medium and small businesses can make a significant difference as a collective. Talk to other industry colleagues to see who has implemented new policies and procedures toward a sustainable goal. Exchange ideas because it will involve a considerable amount of creativity to change processes to affect:
- Diversity and inclusion
- Employment and poverty reduction
- Efficient resources
- Cultures and heritage
- Peace and security
Whatever your goals, immediate benefits will not always be apparent, so stick to the plan of action, knowing you will be part of a better future.
Preparing for Change
Your business and brand can develop a strategy toward making a positive impact on the causes that align with your core values. Are you doing the right thing and taking responsibility for your actions to drive long-term success? Operate your business well, and people will notice and extend their trust. It’s not just a business model for sustainable growth; it’s a movement.
Guiding Employee and Consumer Buy-in
As a business owner, you must lead employees with clear business objectives and goals to align all decision making to the core value and actions needed to reach them. Look at your business from the employee and customer perspective to determine measurable goals. Their viewpoint of your service or product lets you know if they recognize the value you are offering and what should change.
Employees need to see the benefits of the transformation to help build on the strategies for sustainable growth. Each member must have a specific contribution to the goal to gain a sense of ownership. Ask for ideas and thoughts about your cultural shift to spark enthusiasm. Breed an open environment for exchanging innovative solutions that will positively influence decisions on the organization’s direction. The transformation to new core values will constantly be changing, and they need to evolve and collaborate to share knowledge and success as you grow.
The Team Perspective
Help everyone focus on the bigger picture. People invest more in change when they feel that their work matters. They buy-in and contribute to the greater vision, for immediate and long term results. Just as you need the trust from employees and consumers to make a cultural shift, you’ll need to trust your people to pivot and adapt to the core values one step at a time.
Are you ready to achieve sustainable growth by redefining the core values of your business? Let your community know what you stand for and think of ways to demonstrate an important strategy that includes environmentally friendly, socially conscious, and economically viable solutions that support community needs. Your choices can lead to better consumer loyalty and become word-of-mouth referrals from people who share your ethics and morals to sustain the world we share. The result is a higher level of satisfaction, a better customer experience, new product innovations, and happier employees.