Values, Present and Future – ElPropósito4 min de lectura

How values keep us on course

Photo: unsplash.com/@sebaspenalambarri

One of the main things we keep searching for is the meaning of our lives: a guide that tells us each decision will lead us down a road that, ups and downs included, brings peace and wellbeing. That meaning (or Purpose) carries one more element inside it: our values. Here’s how they serve us and how to put them to work for you.

Looking at a work of art, listening to a song or taking in a landscape, we know deep down that beauty exists. We can’t quite describe it, yet we know it’s there. Values are the same, especially the ones we all carry in some form. They’re there, they’ve always guided our decisions somehow, and they’re always waiting for us to bring them into the light and let them lead.

Our mission in this world, together with our values, gives us a powerful tool called Purpose. Having a reason for being plus a system that keeps making us better people is at the core of leadership that inspires and endures. Knowing our Purpose is phase one. Phase two asks us to get on the right side of the force and make decisions true to it, however hard they are.

In any system, values (or anti-values) are much harder to express and use if nobody spelled them out in advance. Each member brings a unique set of values, and the goal is to align them with the system’s own so it can work as a whole. That’s the first spark that starts shaping how we want every challenge to be met along the way.

When every member of a team models the values that define them and lets purpose guide their decisions, the system is there. We know it exists and we see it in their actions and in how they communicate, in every kind of language. We see it in how they identify with one another and, above all, in each person’s ability to rally behind a common goal and back each other until they reach it.

Values and purpose get tested in every circumstance. It’s in times of greater uncertainty, though, that we most need clarity about what will keep us on course or help us change it, knowing that a decision may change our course and never our destination.

How do you use your values and your Purpose to stay on course? What are your team’s values and purpose?

Warm regards and all the best,

Rodrigo Baccaro

This week’s VELA:

• What I’ve been Viewing: The historic SpaceX launch. I watched plenty this week, but seeing an 18-year effort pay off truly amazed me. SpaceX was envisioned almost two decades ago, and over the last two days it made history by putting two astronauts in orbit together with NASA. What I take from this great undertaking and the future of the space race is the power of a purpose and of values shared by a team.
• What I’ve been Listening to: Beethoven: The greatest piano sonatas. I confess I never built, or enjoyed, the habit of listening to music while working or concentrating. As I wrote in an earlier post, one of the big changes the pandemic has brought me is enjoying music while I work. I set out to do it, I’m managing it and, above all, I’m loving it. I’m sharing this wonderful YouTube channel. Beyond Beethoven, I’ve learned to find inspiration in plenty of other music I love, AC/DC for example.
• What I’ve been Reading: As Covid-19 Disrupts Global Supply Chains, Will Companies Turn to India? A Harvard article worth reading, especially to understand how trade balances may shift after COVID given the heavy reliance on a single supplier of raw materials.
• What I’ve been Learning: Risk Management. A wonderful Coursera course well worth taking, especially now, when one of the pandemic’s biggest lessons is managing risks and response plans in time. Thank you for the great recommendation.

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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