Aligning values and operations honors employees and improves business results

Family businesses have a secret weapon that public companies can’t replicate: authentic values alignment. Yet most family enterprises leave this competitive advantage on the table, missing opportunities to fully engage employees and improve business results.

Integrity Improves Employee Engagement and Retention

When they are functioning at their best, family businesses are leveraging the strong foundation of values inherited from the founders to maintain robust corporate cultures that keep business operations aligned and effective. This alignment in turn improves employee engagement and retention because many people, and particularly many young people today, deeply value this congruency. They gravitate to workplaces that do, too.

These people bring thoughtful attention and spiritual awareness with them to work. And in workplace cultures with integrity, they are rewarded with a deeper sense of integration: congruency. These workers often outperform less thoughtful peers, because they are engaging workplace challenges and opportunities with their whole selves. This satisfies a yearning of the human heart beautifully described by Steven Garber in his little book, The Seamless Life: A Tapestry of Love & Learning, Worship & Work. “We are called to be like the Creator himself, yearning for heaven and earth to touch in and through the work of our hands.” (p. 50)

Workplaces in which this deep yearning is understood have strong employee engagement and retention. But what does this look like in practice?  

“Better Than When You Came In”

Last week we met the principal of a business that has a corporate timeline posted prominently on an office wall. The poster includes significant milestones in the growth of his architectural services firm. This is a competitive field in which retention matters – a lot. In appreciation for how crucial employees are to business success, the timeline also shows arrival and departure dates of past and present staff members. He says of those he hires, “We may not have you for your whole professional journey, but we want you to walk out better than when you came in.” Management sees employees as whole people with important relationships, concerns, and commitments beyond the workplace. Retention is strong because workers are treated with trust and respect and supported in their personal and professional development. Their lived experience demonstrates that corporate values and operations are aligned.

But HOW? The Values Edge

How do leaders of the best family businesses steward the founders’ values over time? This can be a huge challenge. How, for example, do family businesses maintain family values as the business grows beyond family members? How do they maintain culture during times of challenge such as growth spurts and leadership transitions? How do second and third-generation leaders honor legacy family values while creating their own values-based workplace culture?

The most successful family businesses have found that the answer lies in a systematic approach to values alignment.

To help family businesses address these challenges, Family Business Facilitators uses Values Edge 2.0 created by family business researchers Dennis Jaffe and Cynthia Scott. An initial session helps family members and key leaders define and share their personal values. Later, a follow-up session enables the group to define core and aspirational values for the enterprise. These processes honor the depth and breadth of human hopes while casting a discerning eye on alignment with business operations. Jaffe and Scott write, “Values are the cornerstone of life – the foundation for identity, behavior, motivation, career, and lifelong resilience. They point to what we consider the core of who we are, how we make decisions and act. Our values form a personal fingerprint, a shorthand for defining identity.”

Practical Impact

Is this too touchy-feely to be practically beneficial? Not at all! The Values Edge process gives your family business a renewed sense of purpose. It rekindles shared engagement because stakeholders understand each other better and learn how to work together more effectively. Upon this foundation, a congruent workplace culture can be built. Family values that may not translate readily to business contexts can be adapted rather than abandoned.

Contact Us to Get Started

Family Business Facilitators can guide your family business through a systematic approach to values alignment. The Values Edge 2.0 Process will:

• Help your leadership team discover shared values that drive unified decision-making
• Establish clear enterprise values that guide daily operations and strategic choices
• Build a coherent family business culture that attracts and retains top talent
• Generate measurable improvements in engagement, retention, and competitive positioning

Contact us today to get started.

A Deeper Perspective

The Workplace: “The Primary Location for Spiritual Formation”

Eugene Peterson, author of the best-selling contemporary paraphrase of the Bible called The Message, teaches that Sabbath-keeping gradually cultivates a strong ability to pay attention to the wonder of life, and eventually to understand and embrace the sacredness of all of life and life’s activities. He admits that wonder is not often encouraged in the workplace, and then asks:

“Does that mean we put spiritual formation ‘on hold’ during working hours and pick it up again after hours and on weekends?

I don’t think so.

For here is the striking thing: The opening scene in the resurrection of Jesus occurs in the workplace. Mary Magdalene and the other women were on their way to work when they encountered and embraced the resurrection of Jesus. I’m prepared to contend that the primary location for spiritual formation is the workplace.” (Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, p. 127)

100,000 Hours

This may sound like an overstatement, but the data supports it. Family businesses that develop healthy corporate cultures undergirded by strong values shape both family and non-family employees in powerfully positive ways. That’s because, during our lifetimes, we spend nearly 100,000 hours in the workplace! Are you stewarding this profound influence thoughtfully and intentionally? How is your family business forming people?