This is a month to honor those that paid the ultimate sacrifice to protect us on the front lines whether in the military or in our communities. With reflection on these veterans as well as the 7% of American citizens that commit to our military and our country and its values, it is appropriate we have been reading several books about the positives of companies hiring veterans due to their focus on mission and attributes of preparedness, strong work ethic, problem solver, integrity, commitment to values and many more.
One thing that has really stuck out this week is that the US Marine Corps teaches – “do the right thing in the right way for the right reason.”
As we read about the less than exemplary work places of Uber and WeWork, it makes one think where has this generation of business leaders gone astray? Where are the values?
Most of these companies have a mission, and most of those mission statements include a sense of doing good for society in some way, where they miss the mark is the core values that are lived by example every day by the business leaders. We have heard recently from a young start-up company with significant potential to be a positive influence on millions of people’s lives that they “need to get their culture document complete.” This company is over three years old and quite frankly at the senior level has quite a toxic work environment. Why? Because the leadership isn’t living every day the values they truly want the company to have. Is it these young leaders fault? We don’t think entirely, part is the fault of society and the values our youth are learning from their “mentors.” Or maybe they are new values and society hasn’t caught up with the new value system.
But let’s not worry about fault, let’s focus on the future. This is where a seasoned business people can partner with these young leaders in a totally collaborative way where everyone is learning from each other and build a powerful enterprise and positive influence on the world. We both look back at our business careers and know that we learned so much about the human side of business from those before us with some time and many experiences and situations in the past to help frame good business decisions in the present. We believe there is a great world ahead of us where the older generation partners with the newer generation and bring each other’s relevance to building companies that literally in a positive way can change the world. Look for those company’s and support them to show the world it can be done and be successful making a positive impact on all those stakeholders that interact with that Company.