The word “values” can sometimes be misconstrued with having only to do with “touchy-feely” type things like feelings. However, the idea of values, when it comes to management/strategy, relates much more to practical matters. There is a huge correlation between correct value alignment and success.

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins devotes a chapter to value alignment entitled, “First who…then what.” In this chapter, Collins states that the Great companies (as opposed to Good companies) get the right people together and then decide on the objective. The alternative, Collins states, is creating an objective and then finding the people you believe will help you reach this objective. The problem with this latter approach is that, for one thing, objectives change almost constantly, and thus you are stuck with people you hired for a specific objective even after that objective is no longer relevant. The second problem with this approach of choosing people to fit an objective rather than choosing the right people and then determining the objective is that while even if the objective remains consistent (which it won’t), and thus the people are in theory right for the objective, these people may not be right for you. What that means is these people may very well drive you crazy.

Too often, as Guy Kawasaki notes, we choose “gurus” who are experts in their field to help us reach an objective, but these people are basically awful…bitter, miserable human beings that attained their expertise at the expense of developing any social graces that would have made them tolerable to be around. To paraphrase Kawasaki, give me a well-adjusted competent worker over a miserable “guru” any day of the week.

Of course, the father of value-based management is W. Edwards Deming. According to Deming, you must determine what the core values are of any organization (system, in Deming’s parlance). This allows you to determine who it is you should be working with; i.e. people who share values. Once this is done you can then determine who your customers are, because you can look to see which people have similar values, and thus, axiomatically, will be interested in the product you’re working on. Approaching the market in this manner allows you to focus your marketing efforts; essential to the success of any business venture.

The tricky part is opening your mind to allow yourself to look for values. The way to do this is not to look for intangible, hard-to-define values like honesty, but rather to look for traits, and then infer the underlying values that drive these traits. For instance, if you know someone who is a voracious reader, you can infer certain values from this trait. Similarly, if you know someone who is a voracious drug taker, you can infer certain values from this trait. While people will typically be subtler in their traits, with some practice you can begin determining the underlying values of people via careful study.

The reason for doing this is that it allows you to find people to work with and—eventually—sell to who are predisposed to resonate with you, because they share the same values. This becomes crucially important when you are choosing band members, managers, record labels…everyone, frankly. And it allows you to determine how best to design your marketing strategy, when you’re ready to start playing live and selling your music, because you’ll understand whom to target based on value-driven traits.