… and what have you done? Another year over, a new one just begun.

These are the opening lines of a song by the late John Lennon, which is still one of the most popular Christmas songs, played by many radio stations around the world this time of the year. The message is simple and timeless and points a finger at our own responsibility to make this world a better world. Nevertheless, we see the world around us sliding away into more conflict and environmental degradation at the hand of man. Yesterday evening I watched some of the DVD recordings of the “Live 8” concert which was organised in 2005 with the purpose to influence the leaders of the eight most powerful countries of the world, who met in Scotland the same weekend, to relief some of the most in-debt countries of their obligations to repay some of their loans. And they did. The concerts were powerful and charged with an emotional plea for one world. Sometimes people can come together for a good cause and achieve a good result. But for how long? What are we doing today to make this world a better world?

Most of us are following the political and economical developments in the world and at home from a distance, accepting the fact that nothing can be done about it anyway, that the power is in the hands of a few others who play the game at other levels. It is good to realize where you stand and know whether or not you can do something about a certain situation.

It is true that we all have issues that we are concerned about: national and international politics, disasters and emergencies, terrorism, extremism and closer to home the costs of living, the education of our children, crime, our health, our jobs, the business etc. All issues are certainly issues to be concerned about. Not everybody is in a position though to influence them. There are issues within our so-called circle of concern and there are issues within our smaller circle of influence. If your circle of concern is big and your circle of influence is small, chances are that your life and business are at the mercy of your external environment. Your situation is dictated by other people, circumstances and factors and you have a lot to worry about. The point is to realize how big your circle of concern and your circle of influence are in relation to each other and ask yourself what to do to enlarge your circle of influence to push towards your circle of concern.             

In other words, make up your mind about the issues that you are concerned about, decide whether or not you want to do something about it and subsequently work on enhancing your influence on the issue. If you conclude that an issue is not for you to have any influence over, it may be better to stop being concerned about it at all. Instead focus on what you can have a (growing) influence over.

Now, your actions again depend very much on what your values are. Values represent what we really find important in life and surprisingly enough very few people will find it easy to define exactly what their values are. But most people act according to their values even if they are not very conscious about it. After all, where your treasure is, there your heart will be. If someone finds it very important to have a car (s)he will try and get one. Those of you, who have built a house, will know how difficult it was to complete the project, but it was worth it because it was very important. Other people find it important to be around their family and because of it hesitate to take on a job that will separate them from their family. Other examples of values are to have respect for each other, to be honest, integrity, etc. We can also know what people do not find important as we observe their behaviour. Somebody who finds it important to get rich quick but does not value honesty or hard work for example will find other innovative ways to get the money. In other words, our values guide our behaviour for a great deal. Do you know what your values are? Try to list and write them down and you will discover that it is not so easy to have a deeper look into your inner self. But if you can, it will help you in getting more clarity about your do’s and don’ts.

Business owners can take this a step further and look into how their personal values translate into how they manage their business. Now, with only a few days to go before Christmas, it is a good time to reflect a bit on our personal and corporate values and goals. In doing so, try and complete the following exercise:

• Define your personal values.
• Do they match the corporate values?
• What can you do to increase the match between your personal and the corporate values?
• In which areas of your work can you become more proactive and thus more effective?
• Write this down and share with management.
• Agree on a time frame to evaluate progress.

For more inspiration during this festive season, I suggest you search the full lyrics of Lennon’s Christmas song.

Merry Christmas.

Ton Haverkort