How Getting Clear on Your Values Cuts Decision Fatigue

A Move Rooted in What Matters

I've spent the last couple of weeks packing up my life, dropping various possessions into friends' attics for storage, and moving from NZ back to Mexico.

Having spent the majority of 2020 in Auckland, I was missing the variety of colour and lifestyle that splitting my life between NZ and Latin America offers. I was also feeling like I was becoming a bit too conventional again in Auckland, doing the Viaduct apartment, BMW driving, Woop lifestyle thing.

Designing a Life Around Your Values

Preparing for the move got me reflecting on what I value, the things that matter to me in life. When I stepped out of the corporate world three years ago, I did so because I had a "life by design" in mind.

That designed life meant:

• Having a company I could run from anywhere
• Supporting organisations and people to see leadership in new ways
• Taking some time to go diving or popping to the beach in the afternoon
• Great weather and accessibility to multiple other countries for more exploring
• A timezone convenient for my clients
• Affordable housing, though Auckland had other ideas

The guiding light throughout this transition has been that life by design idea, rooted in what I VALUE. Which made me wonder how many other people have a clear view of what they value, or whether they are living more of a "life by should".

A Life by Design Versus a Life by Should

So many of us don't have a life we truly value. We trudge through, in a rut, doing things because we feel we should. No inner fire, more of a smouldering pile of wet leaves. I am certainly not saying that jobs, families and mortgages are bad things. One of my oldest friends told me that when he left the Army, got married and had a child, he found the peace and joy he had always been seeking.

Warren Buffett famously said that "value is what you get, price is what you pay". I think we can read that another way. Value is what you want. Price is the sacrifice you are willing to accept.

The Price Worth Paying

I chose to work through the price of sacrificing initial financial and conventional certainty in pursuit of the things I valued more: freedom, travel, variety and passion. Working through the concept of Be > Do > Have, I am well on the way to the life by design I wanted, and have become more of a success than I thought possible when I started. I have managed to visit over twenty countries and met some remarkable people along the way.

I feel grateful for the life I have. I also believe that if you can identify what you value and start working towards it, you can change your world, and the world of those around you.

Two Definitions of Value Every Leader Should Know

Most leaders I work with are clear on what they value personally. Fewer have stopped to ask what their business actually rewards when the numbers are under pressure. It is worth holding both definitions in mind at once.

In ethics, value denotes the degree of importance of a thing or action, with the aim of determining what actions are best to do or what way is best to live, or to describe the significance of different actions.

In economics, economic value is a measure of the benefit provided by goods or services to someone else. It is measured relative to units of currency, and the interpretation is based on the maximum amount of money a specific actor is willing and able to pay for the goods or services.

Both matter. The question is what happens when they pull in opposite directions.

When Economic Value and Ethical Values Collide

Value is measured in currency, but also in customer loyalty, brand power, and numerous other ways. I remember during my MBA the long conversations we had around customer lifetime value. Later, working for a bank, I watched announcements go out to close brick-and-mortar branches in favour of digital services.

It was a tough lesson. A local branch serving the community is a good thing, but the majority of customers who use a branch are not high-value customers. They are mostly older people getting out for the day to cash pension cheques, or small businesses banking their takings. Closing the branches had a net positive value effect on the bank without disrupting high-value customers, and therefore added economic value to the share price. Much was made of the lack of ethical values in removing this fixture from various Kiwi towns, but that concern seemed to carry less weight in the final decision.

So is economic value the primary consideration for leaders? I would like to believe it should be balanced, but in most businesses money comes before people.

That tension does not resolve itself. It requires a leader who is clear enough on their own values to make a deliberate call rather than simply defaulting to whichever argument is loudest in the room. That is precisely where personal clarity cuts decision fatigue. When you know what you stand for, you spend less energy relitigating the same trade-offs every time pressure mounts.

From Personal Values to the People Around You

Getting clear on your own values is the starting point, not the finish line. The next step is understanding what your team values, the things that matter most to them, and whether you as a leader are genuinely aware of those. A team whose values are invisible to its leader is a team that will eventually disengage, regardless of how well the numbers are performing.

This moves in both directions. Leaders who share their values openly give their people a reference point. It becomes easier for everyone to make faster, more consistent decisions because the underlying logic is visible rather than guessed at.

Why Clarity on Values Matters for Leaders

I'll continue to unpack the concept of value in future blogs.

If this sounds like your week

Your managers are not the problem. They are where the problem is stuck.

When your last leadership spend was signed off, did anyone go back to those managers' bosses and ask what changed? That question is the JBL Outcome Standard, and it is how I work.

• Find the friction. A short diagnostic that shows which decisions are stalling, and at what level.
• Am I the bottleneck? Ten questions on where your week is actually going.
• How I work with GMs. Six weeks, one hour a week, up to twelve of your managers, scored by their own bosses.
• Beat Burnout, Boost Performance. The book.
• The High Performance Leader podcast.

Managers I work with reclaim around four hours a week, and their bosses score the change 8.75 out of 10. Would it be a crazy idea to find out how we did this? Book a scoping call.

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