Here’s a question for the day: Why is it that you do what you do? More importantly, what are the rules that go along with that?
Over this last weekend, I spent time researching the principles of different organizations and companies. The Principles that inspired me the most were from Costco.
Let me go through them one at a time.
Their very first principle is to obey the law. I totally understand that. That is something that we have to do literally as soon as we come through the door in the morning. We are a highly regulated industry. We answer to multiple compliance departments, making sure that everything that we do—everything that we say, including this blog post—is accurate and correct. We have to make certain that everything we do along our process is done in such a fashion that it follows regulations.
Number two from Costco: Take care of their members. Their job is to make certain that their customers are being taken care of in a very fair and responsible way. That is something that I can entirely embrace.
Number three: Take care of employees. This we do by making sure that we not only provide the education that is required regulatorily, but we always make certain that we provide additional insight every single day. In fact, as we begin our day, we make certain that we take 15 minutes at minimum—and sometimes an hour each day—just talking about how we can make the experience better with less friction and more impactful for our clients.
Lastly, according to Costco, is respect for their suppliers. We have suppliers as well—I’ll refer to them as “vendors”—whether it might be a product or a service that we use within our organization. If our vendors don’t win, we don’t win, because we need their support. If clients don’t win, then we don’t win because we won’t have any clients. And if we win but our suppliers don’t win, and our clients - if they don’t win, nobody wins. Because we need the services to work that we have put into place, not only today, but next week, next year, and into the future.
So, as I was thinking about all of these different possibilities, I wish to share with you three values that I’ve spoken to clients for literally decades.
Number one, everything that we have to do has to be done legally. That might seem like a simple statement, but it is amazing what some clients would like us to do for them that might seem a little bit sketchy. Those situations require us to say, "No". It’s got to be legal.
It’s got to be ethical. Ethical means the profession that we’re in—there is a certain standard that we should live by. It should be part of our persona, making sure that we do things in an ethical way.
Then each one of us has to act in a moral capacity. Here, we drill down even more. How am I making my decisions from my mind and from my heart for our clients?
So, if we’re looking at the Financialoscopy® team, know that we are drilling down to three core values. It’s got to be legal, ethical, and moral. That is our compass.
If that’s a compass you can live with, if it speaks to you, then perhaps it’s time to schedule your Financialoscopy®.
