Jonathan Bolden is a Stanford MBA who was among our first class of Leadership Fellows in 2007. I've kept up with him via social media, and today a tweet of his led me to a blog post from last December. Jonathan has turned his passion for coffee roasting into a small business--a "micro-micro enterprise," in his words--but even at that scale he's had to think about values, culture and service:
Even in a micro-micro enterprise, you must put stakes in the ground.
It is through these stakes that values are declared.
It is on these stakes that a house/a culture is built.
It is by the support of these stakes that customers are served and a brand is established.
That strikes me as not only an astute analysis of the relationship that exists among values, culture and service, but also a call to action to ask myself...
What stakes have I put in the ground?
What values have I declared through these stakes?
What culture have I built upon them?
And what level of service and what personal brand do they support?
Photo by Liber.