Nearly 3 years ago, I wrote an article for Dent Global about the importance of values in both our family and business life.  A few weeks back something incredible happened:

1). I found the exact words of our ‘family values’ as a miniature sign and gave these to the kids for their bedrooms (now both 5 years old).

2). A few days later at bedtime, James picked his up and started going through a checklist:

“Use Kind Words – yes, I’ve done this today. Listen – I didn’t listen to mummy earlier, but I can listen better tomorrow”.

3). Lily came 3rd in her sports day race, and her younger (by 1 minute!) brother, James, came 1st.  But she didn’t mind that James was  proudly donning his ‘1st place’ rosette because she told me that she tried her best.

4). Lily & James are in Devon this week, staying with their Nana and Gramps. We came into our home office this morning to find that James had secretly hung his values plaque on the office door as a reminder for us whilst he’s away!

I’m not sharing this because we have child geniuses…

You see, a key component in my business Scale Philosophy is those beliefs / values – what we call the ‘character’. A business that has its own character sets out a comprehensive set of standards and behaviours that it holds dear and this helps stakeholders in that company identify how to act, how to make decisions and what type of behaviour is expected.

(You can read the original post and learn the Why and How here: http://www.keypersonofinfluence.com/how-my-family-rules-help-scale-a-business/)