Pursuing Values…Blah, Blah, Blah
Pursuing Virtues…Aha!!!

Pursue the right one and the other follows automatically.

By Jay Winchester

There is an endless stream of words written on corporate websites extolling corporate values. The aim is to convince potential customers or investors that the company conducts its business according to these values. Typically, the lists include such qualities as integrity, service, quality, transparency and respect.

What is rare is the company that lists the virtues it pursues in the course of doing business. You probably find yourself thinking: “Values…virtues…what difference does it make which one my company pursues? It’s all good.” To be frank, that ain’t necessarily so. The essential difference between values and virtues stems from their respective points of origin.

The Progressive Living Glossary defines values this way: “Our values concern those things we regard as having ultimate importance, significance, or worth. …The relative importance of these values…varies…according to the prevailing circumstances of life, with those things valued which cannot readily be obtained taking on greater significance…”

The key word in this definition is relative, inferring that what is of great value to me could very well be of considerably less value to you, and according to this definition - and most other commonly accepted definitions of the word - that’s fine. However, this relativistic reading of values leaves defining values open to individual interpretation, circumstance and subjectivity. In other words, my values are determined, ironically, by what matters most at that moment, rendering them fluid and transitory.

Dictionary.com defines virtue this way: Moral excellence, goodness, righteousness; conformity of one's life and conduct to moral and ethical principles; effective force; power or potency. This notion of moral excellence lends itself to the idea that virtues are defined not by my subjectivity, but by some implied belief in a moral authority, something more than my own conscience, and therefore, outside myself. If I accept that a moral authority exists outside myself, then the second definition involving conforming my life - or at least making the effort to conform - to that standard comes into play. It then follows that this conformity imbues my life with a powerful and potent force that is effective in my life. This must be true; otherwise, the pursuit of virtue becomes a pointless exercise.

What does this have to do with my business? If I agree with the definitions presented above, then I must also agree that pursuing virtue offers something more than the delineation of my values does. The pursuit of virtue involves my whole life, with my business being one aspect of it. It is not something separate from the rest of me. This thinking represents a significant shift: My business is just one aspect of my life and as such, demands that my conduct in it be true to who I am, in light of the virtues I pursue, at all times.

It is common in our culture, especially, for business owners to compartmentalize that aspect of their lives, keeping it separate from family, faith and all other aspects. This is faulty thinking. You cannot live one way at work and another at home. Eventually, the real you bleeds through. How much better then, for your life and your business, if that real you is involved in the pursuit of virtue.

Socrates said, “Virtue does not come from wealth, but…wealth, and every other good thing which men have…comes from virtue.” This resonates with the truth of Proverbs 4:18, a Biblical book of ancient Hebrew wisdom: “The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.”

Pursuing virtue endows our values with the aura of authenticity and the ring of truth.