 What we know about value hasn’t changed much since Adam Smith penned The Wealth of Nations in 1776. Yet, in just the last five years more than 70 books have been written about this subject. This one is different. While it’s easy to theorize about value, what’s needed is not more abstract analysis but some pragmatic advice about how to turn what you know into action. How to close the knowing-doing gap. This book presumes that you know what makes your company valuable. But institutional routines, obligations and pressures create behaviors in your organization that hold you back from acting on what you know. Instead of merely pondering the concept of value, we take a look at the behaviors that commonly work against it. More important, each chapter recommends a value-creating behavior you can use to overcome the inertia of good intentions. The positive behaviors recommended here can help you and your organization get the value habit: by closing the gap between vision and reality. Our sixth book in the Straight Talk Series spells it out in plain language. Order The Value Habit now or download the PDF below. Here's an excerpt: Get the means right, and the right ends will follow
(The path to value may not be easy, but it should, at least, be clear.) Value-inhibiting behavior: You ignore the disconnect between what makes you valuable and what you and your people are doing about it. What if you sent an e-mail tomorrow morning, directing everyone to focus exclusively on activities that create value? Where would they start? Where would you? Translating vision into tangible action is the hard part. Uncertainty about how to create value springs more often from what you have not told your people than from what you have. Communicating your vision is good, but it’s not enough. You have to lay out the incremental steps that close the distance between what you know and expect and what your employees have to do. These steps may be obvious to you, but never take it for granted that they will just happen. |
Order now or download the PDF below. Related Content:
Report: Adopting the Value Habit (And Unleashing More Value for Your Stakeholders)
Newsletter: The Value Habit
Tools: The Enterprise Value MapTM
Services: Driving Enterprise Value |
