Maybe your values should change

“If you have integrity and you know who you are, your values don’t change.”

More and more, I find that this assertion is missing the complexity and richness of human experience.

If your values are competence, creativity and accountability, you might find that depending on your situation you might exclusively focus on just one of these values and not pay that much attention to the others.

Over time you’ll develop your own sense and interpretation of these values. You’ll go deeper into what it means to be competent, creative and accountable in a business like yours.

You’ll develop sub-values and sub-narratives that widen the scope of what creativity means to you and how you manifest it with your products or services.

Your values are the endless source of your stories and narratives. They will evolve and change over time. If what you think about your values hasn’t changed in the last three years it’s because they aren’t active in your business. Everything that is alive, in business and in life, changes.

Don’t get caught up in the idea that to be value-driven your values need to stay the same. What’s at the core of your business is your commitment to your values, not your commitment to a definition of them from five years ago. If you want to be led by your values, let them grow.

#integrity #narratives