Among other things, I am a developer of talent and creator of organizational cultures and structures that will produce the best possible environment for talent to succeed. A clear and common understanding of shared values is key to any organization’s success.

In my professional pursuits I have been fortunate enough to interact with organizations of vastly different backgrounds, operational missions, product lines, and organizational structures. There are few things that unite organizations of all types, be they a titan of industry in the Fortune 500, an elite military unit, a non-profit, or a professional sports team. One such thing that does indeed exist across organizations of all sizes and types is the importance of values.

I’m sure you’ve heard the values question before.

“What are our values and how do they lead to our success?”

Unfortunately this discussion point, or something similar to it, is used too often for marketing purposes instead of a unifying rallying cry that brings teams together under a common ethos. Many times values are discussed during on-boarding and forgotten. Regardless of size, a team’s values, and especially the importance that leadership places on those values, is the most important thing in developing a team to be operating at their best possible level. Countless points of failure can ultimately be attributed to a misalignment of values.

In the realm of talent and organizational development, one of the most important discussions that is occurring across all types of organizations is how to gain and retain the top talent. The United States Marine Corps and Google are having the same discussions regarding how to ensure the top talent in their respective fields is retained to ensure success both now and in the future.

In our world of enhanced connections, social networking, and near complete transparency of data, talent within an organization will know whether or not the values that are being advertised and communicated to them are the same that the organization is actually living. A disconnect will drive away top talent. It’s that simple. People want to work for an organization that espouses values that they believe in and that actually lives up to them.

This disconnect is one of the biggest, and most exciting, challenges that any leader will face. I believe that it is the inherent responsibility of a leader to ensure that the environment in which their team operates is set up to ensure the team has the highest possibility of success. The values discussion is a big part of that success and research on this topic shows that top talent holds organizational values as a prime motivator in deciding whether or not to invest in a given organization or to go elsewhere.

This level of attention to detail is often something new to most leaders. We are brought up in the world, especially in the world of business, to focus on factors of success such as profit and loss, growth percentages, and revenue. These are all vital to success but leaders must take it upon themselves to build and maintain the foundation of their team’s values in order to make the aforementioned success factors as likely as possible to occur. The focus should be on the people within the organization and the values that they embrace. When values are aligned and the team is set up for success then profits will rise, wins will increase, and top talent will invest themselves towards the success of the organizational as a whole. Team members will no longer just view themselves as simple employees. They will now be fully committed members of a team that place the success of the group as their personal responsibility.

This commitment will not exist without an alignment of values.