Are You Following Your North Star?

We all know that people are looking for leaders to follow in some way – not to be micromanaged but to follow. Good people leadership in business provides connection and clarity for your goals, and by leading well and setting clear expectations, you align everyone’s efforts to the ultimate purpose of your company.

There are many great leaders out there talking about how companies should be clear on the purpose of their business: your “North Star,” if you will. At Digi-Key, our North Star is “enabling the world’s ideas.” That means we want to be the best digital distributor to provide product, services and solutions that our engineers, manufacturers, students and makers need when they need it. That North Star sounds great, and looks good, but how do you align your people to that purpose? How do you show up as a business and connect your people to what you are doing?

It doesn’t happen overnight, or with wishful thinking -- it takes intentional planning and helping everyone understand what your purpose is. When we’re connecting our people at Digi-Key with our purpose, it’s easy to connect to our end goal – if a customer doesn’t receive their order, they’re not getting the parts they need to create something that might very well change the world!

Celebrate Your Values

To connect people with your purpose, you need to celebrate your organization’s values when they show up, and you also need to acknowledge when they don’t show up. At Digi-Key, our values have organically surfaced in the last few years, and they are becoming a centerpiece for our culture (a work in progress).?

At the core of our values are trust and respect. Those two traits are the anchor for everything else, and if we show up with trust and respect, everything else will come. For us, that’s our four core values:

Passionate about improvement – this is really a growth mindset where we focus on continuous improvement.

People make the difference – people need connection, and our customer focus is the foundation our company was built on. It’s at the core of everything we do.

Excellence over perfection – we encourage problem-solving and empower decision-making in everything we do.

Own it! Results matter – “accountability” is such an overused word, but very simply, the art of action.

By driving a culture of transparency and vulnerability, we’re able to celebrate those moments when our values shine through and recognize the other moments when we miss the mark on what we value.

To get all these words aligned on paper and in the meeting room is the easy part. But having your team live these words day in and day out boils down to culture. When leaders are vulnerable and lead with empathy, your values shine through and become a baked-in part of your culture that your team lives out every day.

For example, it’s common to hear things in meetings like, “In this case, we didn’t own it,” or “We exceeded this customer’s expectations because we are passionate about improvement.”

When you’re intentional with your values, and those values point to your North Star, they allow your company to grow. If that’s missing? Look at your results. Be intentional about your people and culture, be clear about your strategy, and the results will follow.

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