Experience has taught me that it’s easy to talk about values, hard to implement them, and even harder for an outsider to determine which values are heartfelt and which are window-dressing. Wall Street cannot place a value on values.
-Howard Schultz, Chairman & CEO, Starbucks
“Pour Your Heart into It”
I am still looking for the modern-day equivalent of those Quakers who ran successful businesses, made money because they offered honest products and treated people decently, worked hard themselves, spent honestly, saved honestly, gave honest value for money, put back more than they took out and told no lies. The business creed, sadly, seems long forgotten.
-Anita Roddick, founder,The Body Shop
Body and Soul
Schultz is right. It is easy to talk about values and companies today are full of such talk. There are consultants, in fact, whole companies, that make a living helping companies discover and develop their values. I know, I’ve been a part of this work. And often these values are prominently published in slick investment and marketing material. Just as often they hang in the cubicles, offices, and factories, not as a guide as intended, but as a silent mocker of the disconnection between what is said and what is done.
In our personal lives as well, it is a challenge to live out our values…more so today when values are window dressing for what is really an accommodating, situational morality.
Values only have meaning and life when joined with living acts of service and work.
Can we answer Roddick’s challenge? In a world facing unbelievable human challenges, can those of us who claim to follow Christ take the lead in generating innovative business practices, business models, and ventures that bring the heart and soul of the Kingdom of God to a watching and needy world? What are the living acts of service that will be the legacy of our careers or companies?
There are no formulas here, just the challenge of a lifetime of faith and imagination and service.
