What’s on the table?

How important are our personal values anyway? Are they just a result of our upbringing or our religion, or is there something more to them?  And if we decide having values is important, isn’t it important for them to stay fluid?  We want to be adaptable as leaders in this fast-paced, here-today-gone-tomorrow culture, right?

Here’s the rub: this fast-paced, ever-changing culture brings with it all new problems and challenges–ones that nobody has ever faced before.  Some of these problems don’t have easy solutions.

Whenever we are faced with a problem that we can’t defeat or reconcile, the temptation is to change something.

Change our methods.

Change our expectations.

Change our outlook.

Change our habits.

Change our direction.

Change our theology.

Change our convictions.

Now, some of these should be on the table for changing and some should not.  But often we don’t know which is which, and that is because we haven’t decided what we value.  We don’t know ahead of time what things are on the table, and in what situation, if ever at all.

As a leader, knowing our values in this ever-changing culture is a necessity.  Otherwise we could sell the whole thing out from under ourselves.  And that would be a disaster.

Decide today what you value.  Then write it down.

Decide what’s on the table.