Your road to success begins with core values

Do you ever feel that you’re wandering in circles? We all do. And for good reason: It’s programmed into our nature.

In 2009, a German scientist named Jan Souman took a group of subjects out to empty parking lots and open fields, blindfolded them, and instructed them to walk in a straight line. Some of them managed to stay on course for 10 or 20 paces; a few lasted for 50 or a hundred. But in the end, all of them wound up circling back toward their points of origin.

Not many of them. Not most of them. Every last one.

Dr. Souman’s research team explored every conceivable explanation but found no discernable pattern. Neither was the phenomenon limited to walking. Ask people to swim or drive blindfolded and, no matter how determined they may be to go straight, they soon begin to describe peculiar looping circles in one direction or the other.

So, how do we hold true to our course? Dr. Souman explained what should seem obvious, a simple solution to the circular inclinations of the internal human compass. With external clues for reference, like a mountaintop or other promontory on the horizon, people have no trouble at all traveling a straight line.

Which brings us to our latest entry into the Ethical Lexicon:

Azimuth (az·i·muth/ˈazəməTH) noun

Horizontal direction expressed as the angular distance between the direction of a fixed point (such as the observer’s heading) and the direction of the object

Traveling through life is more complicated that traversing open ground, since conceptual landmarks are harder to identify than geographical ones.  But that isn’t our biggest challenge. For it isn’t the lack of reference points that causes us to veer off course, but the superabundance of bright, shiny objects competing for our attention.

Putting on blinders

We need more than the clear vision of purpose and destination to escape wandering endlessly in circles. We also need the wisdom to filter out disconsonant information, lest the myriad distortions and temptations of the world leave us hopelessly disoriented. This is what King Solomon meant when he taught, “Let your eyes look directly forward, and your eyelids will straighten your path.” We chart our course by focusing on our ultimate goals; we stay on course by shutting out false attractions on every side.

But how can we be confident that we are pursuing the right goals? 

What if our short-term benchmarks are derailing our long-range objectives?

And what if those objectives are themselves ill-conceived? 

In that case, staying on course may itself be at odds with our own best interests.

Staying on the ethically straight and narrow depends on our core values.  That’s why every organization (and individual) needs to articulate a mission statement—a distillation of its foundational principles. A mission statement coalesces naturally around the ideals that drive the individuals within an organization and the reason why the organization exists in the first place.

Define your values

Start by articulating your own personal values. 

• What are the ideals you believe in? 
• What principles would you never want to compromise? 
• What do you want your obituary to say about you after you’re gone?

Make a list of overarching principles you believe in. Write down whatever comes to mind. Don’t self-edit. Some possible entries might be:

• Justice
• Peace
• Equality
• Kindness
• Fairness
• Sanctity
• Integrity
• Service
• Excellence
• Diligence

Once you get started, you might easily end up with 30 or 40 values. 

Next, start to group and prioritize them. Perhaps diligence and excellence belong together, as do fairness and equality. Once you have them grouped, determine which is paramount and which is secondary. Try to combine your entries until you have no more than five or six categories.

Finally, combine the secondary principles into short sentences that describe each core value. For instance, you might define excellence as aspiring to reach your potential through continuous improvement, discipline, creativity, and self-evaluation. Once you have identified and defined your core values, then you are ready to compose your mission statement.

This process should be employed both individually and as part of a team. It may take weeks or even months. Once completed, it should be referred to regularly, especially when facing critical decisions and in moments of crisis.

Troubleshoot the voice in your head

Believing in high ideals doesn’t have to turn us into idealists. As Michelangelo purportedly said, “The greatest danger is not that we aim too high and fail, but that we aim too low and succeed.”

The premium our culture places on comfort and gratification encourages us to abandon ethical diligence in favor of shortcuts and moral compromises: It’s not such a big deal. No one is watching. Everyone else does it. These are the messages that sabotage us in our mission to lead accomplished lives.

Instead, take to heart the speech Robert Duvall delivers to Haley Joel Osment at the end of Secondhand Lions:

Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil. And I want you to remember this, that love… true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in.

I would change one word: “Doesn’t matter if it appears to be true or not.”  Because we don’t see enough of the picture to recognize the truth before our eyes.

But this much is true. The more passionately we commit ourselves to the ideals and values worth believing in, the more we confirm Dr. King’s declaration that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. It also bends toward virtue, and courage, and love.

Yes, we need to live in reality. We also need to appreciate the power we have to shape the reality we live in. Believing in ideals sets us on course to create a world in which those ideals manifest as truth and enrich the quality of our lives.

Yonason Goldson works with business leaders to build a culture of ethics that earns trust, sparks initiative, and limits liability. He is host of the podcast Grappling with the Gray and author of the book by the same name.