There is. Ironically, the single most valuable tool available to businesses to achieve practical results is also the most abstract and intangible. It is what we commonly refer to as values. Values have become a buzzword for business over the last few decades, but the term itself is difficult to define. It is often used to refer to high moral principles or utopian ideals. It is also associated with specific performance criteria such as quality, service and social responsibility. All of these are excellent examples of values. But the term values itself means something more.

Values are powerful levers for human accomplishment. Commitment to achieving high values can generate and release high levels of energy, direct and convert that energy into force, transform that force into the power of organized activities, and express the power through skilled work to elevate the quality and quantity of work accomplished by any company. The pursuit of values calls forth from an organization the highest levels of energy, creativity, commitment, dedication, innovation, productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness. The serious practical pursuit of values is the surest, fastest and most direct path to continuous revenue and profit growth.

In 1893 a railway station-master named Richard Sears established a mail order catalog to sell urban manufactured products to the prospering rural communities of middle America at a time before Henry Ford’s mass produced cars had begun to make the population highly mobile.  Sears rightly perceived the unmet needs of America’s farming community, which was prospering due to the mechanization of agriculture. He recognized the social potential and adapted mail order technology as a means to tap it. His catalog offered products attuned to the aspiration of working class Americans for the comforts, conveniences and amenities of modern life. His catalog sold sewing machines, bicycles, ice boxes, scissors, shovels, folding chairs and countless other things. Exhilarated by his initial success, he did not hesitate to also include hair restorers, potency tonics and just about anything else that might appeal to the imagination of the unsophisticated.