“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffett

People’s reputations are a tricky thing. All we know about someone is just that – what we know. You never know when some expose will uncover some serious skeletons from someone’s closet.

All we can do is work to protect our reputation from our missteps. We don’t do this so others will say greater things about us but so we say better things about ourselves. To know that we stand for something and to be proud that we live out our values.

A well-executed set of core values can do a lot of things for organizations. They can create and protect a strong culture. Core values also help everyone make decisions that protect the organization’s reputation.

An organization’s purpose is the reason it exists. The vision is where it is going and the core values are the guard rails that keep everyone on course as they pursue the vision.

I see a lot of organizations list integrity as a core value. Integrity is a tough core value. It is vague and hard to define. If you don’t do an excellent job explaining what you mean by integrity, you will have everyone implementing what they believe integrity is. A great core value must lead to good decisions. Vague CVs don’t cut it.

There are a couple of definitions of integrity in the dictionary. They are:

The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.

The state of being whole and undivided.

I am not sure if you have experienced this, but I’ve noticed a lot of people with very different moral principles than I have.

A great example of a “we will” statement for integrity is Warren Buffett’s newspaper test. Berkshire Hathaway’s companies employ over 360,000 people. Can you imagine trusting over 300,000 people with the reputation of your company every day? Here is how Buffett handles this:

“I ask the managers to judge every action they take – not just by legal standards, though obviously, that’s the first test – but also by what I call the newspaper test.”

Buffett asks his managers to judge an action by how they would feel if the action was written on the front page of the newspaper the following day. Buffett suggests assuming the article is written by a smart, but pretty unfriendly reporter.

“It’s pretty simple,” he says. “If the decision passes that test, it’s OK. If anything is too close to the lines, it’s out.”

Great core values cause great conversations about how to live them out. Examples and standards like the newspaper test give your people the tools they need to make great decisions.

If you don’t have core values, I can’t recommend enough the benefits they will bring to you and your company. If you do have core values, do your people know how to live them out?

We’ve got some great free tools to help you create and live out core values in our Resource Library. You can check them out here –www.valuesdrivenresults.com/resource-library/ or give us a call at (229) 244-1559. We’d love to help you in any way we can.

Curt Fowler is president of Fowler & Company and director at Fowler, Holley, Rambo & Stalvey.

Curt and the team at FHRS help leaders build great companies through Virtual CFO, strategy, tax and accounting services.

Curt is a syndicated business writer, keynote speaker, and business advisor. He has an MBA in strategy and entrepreneurship from the Kellogg School, is a CPA and a pretty good guy as defined by his wife and four children (No. 5 coming June 2021!).