Back in 2015, I was three years into the Managing Director role at Pure Oil NZ. I was fully involved in every part of the business from crushing seed to sales, finance to health and safety and everywhere in between. Looking back, I pleased to still have some sanity.
I had always struggled with coaching staff on how to perform in difficult situations as judgment is subjective with nuance adding complication. I later attended an IceHouse Owner Operator Course where I had a “lights on” moment regarding what a good set of core company values can do for a business. For the next 12 months we worked on a set of values that we believed could make our company thrive.
Sunflowers, Altonbrook Farm, Southbridge, 2022
We went for plain English, that I use, and thought would resonate with staff: refer to Purpose & Values Six years on, we have tweaked a couple and added one, but the power of these values is immense. We live the values, we hire people off the back of them, and critically the Team refer to these when curly situations arise. Our success of the Core Values is that we didn’t just put them on the wall but incorporated them into our business and slowly but surely, they become our culture.
