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Clinical Solutions Blog

10 Easy Steps to Creating Core Values That Will Make You Millions

Posted by Rick Lau on Aug 26, 2015 11:47:00 AM

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In my last article, we covered the importance of core values and how smart companies have used core values to drive massive business growth.

Today we are going to walk through a framework that is going to help you think about how to develop core values for your physiotherapy, chiropractic, or massage business. If you grab a piece of paper and a pen and follow these steps, you’ll have something in place in the next 60 minutes.

So go grab that pen because this exercise is well worth the effort and will make your clinic millions!

Clinic Supplies Canada Core Values

About 2 years ago Clinic Supplies Canada took the time to develop core values, and now everything we do is based on them – helping to drive up employee commitment, customer satisfaction, and 65% growth year after year. 

Our core values are: 

1. Create Magical Experiences 

We love people and our goal is to provide our clients with magical experiences that make them say “Wow!”.   

2. Think Forward

We are trendsetters. We are constantly challenging status quo, listening to our client’s feedback, and validatng our assumptions to build the best solution for our clients.  

3. Make it Happen

We have the ultimate control of what we do. We are accountable to our peers, our clients, our organization and more importantly ourselves.  Making an excuse is easy but making it happen is what gives our clients stunning value.  

4. Build a Team we Love 

We are a group of people who value personal growth and love to have fun. Encouraging each other to challenge the tasks that we love doing, and inspire each other to pursue our areas of strength.

 

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See my journey as I help clinic owners build kickass businesses #clinicaccelerator 
 

 

Ten Easy Steps To Creating Core Values

Delivering Happiness outlines 10 general steps that we are going to put in the context of physiotherapy, chiropractic, and massage therapy clinics.

Step #1: Decide if You’re Committed

Laying a solid foundation does take a bit of time, time that may seem like a waste of time. So you have to see the value in the long-term benefits of implementing such things in your business.

Are you truly committed to having a values-based health business?

Tony Hsieh from Zappos said that they resisted doing it for years because “it was something I’d always thought of as a very “corporate” thing to do”.

I’m sure he didn’t realize that by implementing core values he’d take his business from nothing to over 1 billion dollars in revenue! Suffice to say, he admits he should have done it sooner.

Make the decision sooner rather than later and commit to getting core values in place.

Step #2: Figure Out Your Own Personal Values

Most people have never really thought about it before, so working out your own personal values can surprisingly be more difficult than you think.

Mind Tools says:

 “Your values are the things that you believe are important in the way you live and work. They (should) determine your priorities, and, deep down, they're probably the measures you use to tell if your life is turning out the way you want it to. Values are usually fairly stable, yet they don't have strict limits or boundaries. When you define your personal values, you discover what's truly important to you.”

We all have values, whether we acknowledge them or not, and they are the things that help us make decisions and plans for our lives.

Mind Tools gives us these tips to finding our own personal values:

A good way of starting to do this is to look back on your life – to identify when you felt really good, and really confident that you were making good choices. 

  1. Identify times you were happiest in your life or job
  2. Identify times when you were most proud in your personal life or career
  3. Identify times when you were most fulfilled and satisfied

When you work through your past experiences, you can often find a thread running through them. Then you can use these experiences to determine your top 5-10 values. 

Step #3: Get Key People’s Personal Values

Who are the people involved in your practice?

Business partners? Staff? Physiotherapists? Chiropractors? Massage Therapists? Customers? 

What are their core values?

This is the step where you ask them.

Developing core values is not just about you; it’s about creating company culture and meaningful beliefs that everyone aligns with. So that means it’s very important to involve as many people as possible in this process.

Send out an email saying:

“Please email me 4 or 5 values that you live by (or want to live by) that define who you are or who you want to be. Each value should be one word or at most a short phrase”.  

Step #4: Combine People’s Values

Take all the feedback and values you collected in step 3 and sit down with one or two key people in your business to talk about the best values that will represent your business and brand. If you are a solopreneur right now, then sit down with yourself.

Write them down – this is your first draft. 

Step #5: Test Values Against Employees And Ex-employees

Once you think you have some core values drafted out, the next step is to test them against the people involved in your company, or the people who have previously been involved. If you don’t have employees yet, then imagine what qualities will be most important.

Think about who those people are, and compare them to the values you have chosen. What things do you like about your best employees and have they been represented in your values? What type of things don’t you like, is it because they are not representing one or more of these values?

This is an important step because it helps you really get clear on the values, and in this step you draft the final document. 

Step #6: Test Your Commitment

Now that you have your core values, the test of commitment really sets in.

Developing Happiness says: “Are you willing to hire/fire people based on whether they fit your core values, even if an employee adds a lot of value in the short-term?”

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh says:

“The commitment part was the most challenging part. Be Humble is probably the core value that ends up affecting our hiring decisions the most. There are a lot of experienced, smart, and talented people we interview that we know can make an immediate impact on our top or bottom line. But a lot of them are also really egotistical, so we end up not hiring them”.

Making the commitment to putting the plan into action can be tough. But remember, your core values UNDERLIE EVERYTHING YOU DO, and they help guide your plans and decisions. 

Step #7: Send to The Entire Company and Ask for Feedback

Now that you’ve got your values down and tested your commitment to them, it’s time to send them out to all the people involved in your business and get feedback.  

Step #8: Combine People’s Values (Again)

Really listen to any feedback that comes back and use it to alter, refine, and define your core values (again). Yes, this is a process but revisiting this helps you really delve deep to finding the MEANING, not just writing a DESCRIPTION.

Having truly meaningful core values is the key to creating an awesome company culture. 

Step #9: Roll Out The Core Values

You’re now ready to roll these core values out, get everyone familiar with what they are. Make plaques, email everyone a copy, put them on your website, MAKE THEM KNOWN.  

Step #10: Integrate Core Values Into Everything You Do

Nurse Next Door CEO John DeHart says:

“Our core values are our non-negotiables, we live our core values to the fullest”.

 Whole Foods says:

“Our values do not change from time to time, situation to situation or person to person, but rather they are the underpinning of our company culture”.

 Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh says:

“We developed a list of committable core values…not just values that end up being part of a meaningless plaque on the wall. These core values guide us in everything we do today”.

That’s what we did here at Clinic Supplies Canada. We developed 4 simple but highly aligned core values, non-negotiables that underpin everything we do.

This is especially important to hiring, firing, and performance reviews. Because at the end of the day, if we have happy, motivated, committed staff, our customers are happy and satisfied and keep coming back for more.

That’s how smart health businesses build million dollar clinics!

So take the time to follow these steps and implement core values into your clinic today.

 

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Discover the Secret to Inspiring Employees for Rapid Growth

Take the Quiz: How Engaged Are Your Clinicians and Employees?

Be Better At The Front Desk: 5 Easy Tactics You Should Know

Hire a Better Front Desk Team: Use These 6 Hiring Tactics

 

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