Do your Mission and Values drive you? Do they give you direction just like google maps?

Do your Mission and Values drive you? Do they give you direction just like google maps? 

Our mission is to bring happiness to our customers, colleagues and community, and to be helpful experts and champions of Waterford, showcasing that it is a great place to live.

Our mission is like the roadmap for Liberty Blue, and our values are the compass that help ensure we stick to that roadmap.

Without knowing your mission and values, you won’t know why you’re showing up everyday and, if you are just chasing money, you could find that what you’re doing is in conflict with your values, even if you don’t consciously realise it at the time.

Having clarity over your mission and values brings you and your business many benefits.  Firstly, it allows you to have much more productive converations both within your team and with clients or prospective clients.  Secondly, it makes decisions much easier, because you can ask yourself whether taking a certain action will help you achieve your mission and whether it aligns with your values - whether the answer to both of the questions is “yes” or “no”, it’s an easy decision.  It’s rare you’ll answer “no” to one, but ”yes” to the other. 

Many of our values that we live by within the business are values I developed growing up on the family farm.  I remember my mother often talked about respect and doing the right thing. 

A few years ago I sat down with my team and we agreed the values we would live by;

We do the right thing

We take pride in everything we do 

We love to innovate

Since documenting our values on the wall in our office, we’ve became conscious of the role they play in many areas of the business, from how we treat our clients to who we hire.  In fact, hiring on values and our brand personality is hugely important, because you can teach someone the job, but you can’t teach them the right attitude.   I’ll share our brand personality here to help you get to know us more because I think that’s important for context and I’m proud of the work we have done to get to this place.  Cudos to our mentors and consultants Tony Ruane, Paula Ronan and Matt Giggs for their sage support in this process.  

We are energetic, straight talking, intelligent and empathetic.   These are characteristics we look for when recruiting. After all, new employees need to fit into our culture and the Liberty Blue way.

Defining our values as a business also gives me confidence that, when I’m not in the room, my team will know how to behave in any situation and will behave in such a way that it enhances the reputation of the company. 

So, what does living by our values look like in the real world?  Let me share a story with you.  

A number of years ago, we fired a client.  We managed over 50 properties for him, but he didn’t behave in the right way and look after his tenants.   This client was a real bully towards our staff and his tenants.   It was really stressful dealing with him and his team.   He would do things like demand we change locks and refuse to maintain his properties.

Maria and I made the decision to fire this client not long after the 2008 financial crash, even though his business was worth a significant amount of annual revenue.   But this client didn’t want to maintain his properties to a good standard.  He didn’t want to fix anything that went wrong, even when the locks broke!  We decided to take a hit in our income because we knew that this client wasn’t aligned with our values, in fact we were miles apart in terms of how we do behave. 

Financially, it was a difficult decision, but even though it meant a big loss in our income for the business, the choice to step away from that client was a very straightforward one.  You can’t do the right thing just 80 per cent of the time when it’s easy.  You have to do the right thing all the time, even if it hurts, because thats how you live by your values and demonstrate your integrity.  The negative energy that left with that client was huge and the energy we regained was priceless.   I now realise, I do not want to do business with clients who steal every breath of energy from us. 

One other thing I’d like to share thats important in our business-  Always tell the truth - Because we do the right thing.  We are straight talking and people appreciate that.  When we screw up, we own it and that starts with me.  Learning from our mistakes is how we become better, but we also have to acknowledge them and apologise when they impact others.

It took me a long time to realise the importance of documenting our values and mission.   It brings clarity to everything.  We will always have more to learn, but we are definitely getting, smarter, faster and better. 

I hope you enjoyed the read, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.