January 2023 - www.andwin.net

Image credit: Ian Kim | Unsplash. Com

Saturday, January 21, 2023

This week, I had the privilege to speak at Black’s Tire’s annual associate meeting in South Carolina. Not only is Black’s a significant customer of mine, but I have a close association with the Benton family, who own the company, which dates back almost 20 years. So the opportunity to speak to their team twice this week was very special to me, indeed.

In my prepared remarks, I planned to remind the folks at Blacks that organizations should either: ensure that every single associate in their organization is able to recite, by heart, the values of that organization … or not have values at all. It starts with communicating those values to associates, talking about them constantly, and expecting them to both be able to repeat them when asked but more importantly to live them day in and day out.

But at Black’s, Ricky Benton Sr., the patriarch of the business, whose remarks on Saturday preceded mine, beat me to the punch. He reminded his team of their four values, and that they need to know them and live them each and every day. Ricky didn’t need to hear my speech to understand a plain truth of life and business: teams that have, know, and live by a set of common (positive) values win more often.

And that’s the point for the week.

The values of any organization should define and telegraph to others how it and its people will conduct themselves in any situation. They detail how they treat their people, their customers and their suppliers. They make it clear how an organization’s employees will care for its property and other assets. They tell others what a relationship with their company and its people should be like. And because of these things, they create alignment around positive ways of doing things. Because of that, teams with lived values win more often.

But like everything else in life, learning then living the values of an organization is a choice. But it’s ultimately a choice between winning and losing. Because the behaviors associated with learning then aligning with an organization’s values and its culture are directly tied to job success and in turn organizational success and winning.

Organizations that post value statements on their walls then refuse to live them are guilty of nothing less than making promises they have no intention of keeping. Because posted values that go unlived are simply empty words that rob every person in the place of any credibility they might ever have had.

Black’s Tire lives their values. And because of it, they have credibility with others and are exceedingly successful in the marketplace.

That same outcome is available to any organization … if they live the values of their organization, every play, every day.

Organizations that achieve that will be regarded by more and more of their associates as a great place to work – because organizations where people do what they say they are going to do are the kind of places people want to work. They are also the kind of places people want to buy from, sell to and invest in.

And building a place like that is, after all, what winning is all about.

So, be like Black’s. Learn then live your values.

And win.

To learn more about the author, please click HERE.

To purchase a copy of Phillip’s new book from B&N, please follow this LINK.

Image credit: Pierre Bamin | Unsplash.com

Friday, January 13, 2023

This week, on the plane to Thailand, I watched a movie called, The Duke. It’s a true story about a man named, Kempton Bunton, who, in 1961, was accused of stealing Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London.

Late in the film, on trial for the theft, Bunton rests his entire defense on the notion that his actions were rooted in what we learn is a near life-long sense of duty to his fellow man.

In what is the movie’s most pointed moment, Bunton tells the defense barrister, “It’s you that makes me, me, and it’s me that makes you, you.” What he was saying, I think, is that human beings aren’t meant to be or do things alone. Without others, we, the lives we lead, and that which we endeavor to do in them will be incomplete. True fulfillment requires that we are part of a whole.

And that’s the point for the week.

Creation of anything valuable – indeed of life itself – requires more than one of us.

Achievement, happiness and self-realization are not individual pursuits. They never have been. They never will be. In all of human history, banishment, confinement and isolation have been regarded as punishment, not as something to be sought out. Since ever, those that separate themselves from others have been conspicuous. We have not-so-complimentary terms for them. We look at them funny and wish they’d start thinking about someone other than themselves.

See, challenging convention is one thing. Breaking away from it entirely is a thing altogether different. One says, “let’s go to a different place together.” The other says, “I’m leaving without you.” One is healthy. The other is not.

What Kempton Bunton understood implicitly is that for any of us to reach a height greater than our own requires more than one of us. There is no other way. No one ever stood taller by cutting those around them down. For us to accomplish anything in this business will require the combined efforts of the people in it – not individuals in it for themselves. It’s you that makes me, me, and it’s me that makes you, you, means that together we accomplish something that apart we never could. There’s no room in that for those who have it in their mind to blaze a different path than the one the rest of us are on, or for anyone that wants to play on a team of one.

See, it’s not about any one of us. It’s about all of us and the dreams we have for this place, dreams that come true only because I make you, you and you make me, me and because each of us wakes up every day secure in the knowledge that the whole will always be greater than any one of its parts.

So, be part of the whole.

And win.

To learn more about the author, please click HERE.

To purchase a copy of Phillip’s new book from B&N, please follow this LINK.