Forty years of defining values

Oh my goodness! Forty years in the printing business! For sure that would be more than enough time to “get our act together” or to “know all there is to know” or to know enough “to do the right thing” or to “get rid of the dead wood,” etc. I would agree. If we have been constantly improving for 40 years, we should be doing everything perfectly by now. Well, surprise, surprise! Our leaders did a little self-analysis and much to everyone’s dismay, we discovered we are not perfect.

So, with a little assistance from an outside business management fella, we have determined we have not always lived up to what we have recently defined as Ideal’s “core values.” With due respect to our outside adviser, the five core values we settled upon are just good, solid, common sense qualities that we perhaps thought we had been abiding by all along. And, for the most part, I think that is true. It is also the case that the five values we determined should define us are not so significantly more meaningful than the 15 or so others, such as, “no job too small” or “lift others up,” that we bypassed to concentrate on the following five, which are now to be considered Ideal’s five core values. They are all good, and with the added emphasis they will receive, there will likely be numerous occasions when those involved in this self-improvement exercise will be reminding each other that their actions observed might not quite measure up to the high standards our newly defined core values call for. That should be a good thing!

To our employees, whenever you see one of your fellow workers not behaving so well, feel free to suggest how their actions or reactions measure up against our newly defined core values: