This past weekend we celebrated Mother's Day. As a mother of two teen girls, it is nice that they are old enough to make independent decisions about how to acknowledge this designated day, especially since my husband was feeling under the weather. For my part, I had chosen Sunday to attend to my flower garden in the front yard which had given us a glorious display of Spring bulbs but was now being taken over by baby weeds sprouting throughout the mulch. This is a sizable bed, and I was hoping that my girls would offer to help me with this task. Alas, that didn't happen, but I enjoyed a beautiful drawing and an invitation to take my oldest to work before the start of her shift so that she could cook a special dinner for us to share.

Any mother will tell you that raising children is the most rewarding and most frustrating and at times disappointing challenges of life. It's complicated at times and effortless at others. It's filled with moments of confidence and doubt, mistakes and triumphs, laughter and angry words. No matter the path, motherhood is an occupation of choice that lasts years beyond sending your kids to college or walking them down the aisle.

As a mother and business owner, I find the many similarities in these roles to be striking. 

This month as mother to mother and woman business owner to woman business owner, I am offering these gifts: a special price and exclusive services as a business coach in hopes of helping my sisters in business on their journey to raise their progeny - a company that they love and entirely give themselves to daily.

This offer expires at the end of this month, so stop asking yourself "if" and start asking yourself "when." Click the link below to schedule your free introductory conversation and give yourself and your business the gift of an experienced thought partner who will pour into you the way that you pour into your baby! Let's talk soon.

In the spirit of saving the best for last, I want to wrap up this series by talking about one of the essential elements of your business - the culture. Now before you act on that thought, "Not that squishy stuff," roll your eyes, and stop reading, give me a few more sentences to make my case.​

​Simply stated, culture is the set of values that act as guiding principles for your business. The graphic below expresses why they are important.

So when thinking about culture in the context of Spring Cleaning, I can't help but think about Marie Kondo, author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. For those of you who haven't read her book or watched her series, let me give you the punch line. 

This newly honed joy barometer becomes a litmus test for the acquisition of new items as well so that Marie reports that her clients do not find it necessary to re-engage her services in the future and that most are successfully maintaining their tidied life.

As a business owner, the culture in your organization is steeped in your personal values and therefore enacted without the need for conscious thought. This is not always true, however, for staff. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the business owner to communicate the values that should guide all who are involved in the work of the business. This is known as defining the company's culture.

As Marie discovered with her clients, however, it is often difficult to identify and give words to those values. Often it is a multiple step journey of discovery to reveal and give a name to these unconscious values that guide our way of being. More importantly, once discovered, it is essential to make those values tacit in decision making and actions such as the structure and process changes discussed earlier in this series.
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By now I hope that you are asking, "So how do you do that?" I'm so glad that you asked! Let's return to the graphic representation of the path from values to results because the answer lies in deconstructing this path.