Core values are essential to any successful business. They define the critical beliefs that guide decision making, responsibilities, and the basis for relating to each other and the outside world. In fact, they may be the most important thing underpinning your organisational culture.

When everyone in the organisation fully embraces and operates in support of those values, the organisation runs smoothly. When even one individual in the organisation demonstrates on a fairly consistent basis that their behaviour is out of sync with those values, it can create terribly disruptive and costly organisational friction.

This is something I’ve learnt the hard way. Prior to founding Institutional Real Estate, Inc, I had worked for several different companies whose actual values were out of sync with their stated core values. This made for a very conflicted, very uncomfortable working environment. Even worse, their actual values were completely out of sync with my own core belie