By Andrée-Anne Guénette
Should you leave your values at the door when you go into business? On the contrary, even if the appeal of the easy dollar is persistent, we gain by respecting what is important to us.
Chantal, 49, is a journalist by training and has been an entrepreneur since 1995 when she launched her communication box. Over the years, she simmered other projects, went corporate, scaled her business, and became an author and speaker to boot. She admits to having known leaner years, but always, she wanted to stay the course of working within a company that resembles her. “We must know our core values before going into business. What concessions will we be willing to make money from? I understood that if we experience an internal conflict, it is because two values conflict. »
Values drive every individual and every organization. And anyone who wants to start a business will have to know them well to ensure that they are also part of their business. The Business Dictionary defines corporate values as “the philosophies or principles that guide the internal workings of an organization and its relationships with its customers, partners, and funders.” Exercise is vital if that sounds too ‘corporate’ to inspire micro-enterprises or even self-employed people to start businesses in their basements. “All companies have their values – and these values always influence their ways of doing things,” says Dominic Martin, professor of ethics at the School of Management Sciences at the University of Quebec in Montreal. Even the desire to profit as much is already a value! »
