Having Values in Alignment

Today I was thinking about my mission as I defined it within the pastmonth. In a sense it articulates what I have been doing for a while nowand articulates what I value most. One thing I haven't done is comparethose values to the ones my employer has. What I find interesting isthat while I couldn't name all four of these values in the past, today,without any prompting, and without looking it up, I was able to nameall four.

My employer has four "core" values: CustomerSatisfaction, Respect, Achievement, and Renewal. Customer Satisfactionseems kind of obvious. Respect, as in treating other people withrespect, communicating openly and honestly, embracing differences, andvaluing the environment and community. Achievement speaks towardsmeeting goals, taking responsibility and being accountable for success,and recognizing and celebrating achievements. Renewal is the act ofcontinual learning, or what Stephen Covey might call "Sharpening theSaw."

What I wrote down for my "mission" as you might recall is:Share, Improve, Serve, Inspire. Achievement and Renewal in the abovevalues match up nicely with Inspire and Improve respectively. Serveseems kind of ambiguous now that I think about it, but it does fallinto the Customer Satisfaction as does sharing. Respect doesn't reallymatch any of these, but it is something that is important to me--why Ileft it out of my mission, I'm not sure.

The more I think aboutit, the more the words Respect, Achievement, and Renewal really seem todescribe what I am about. Customer Satisfaction is something that isjob specific, it's not really specific to life in general, but Sharingis.

At the end of the day, I work for a company that valuesmany of the same things that I do. I consider myself very lucky as noteveryone can say that.