Episode Notes

Integrity with business records and operations is where I like to start with clients—learning how they run their businesses and how they feel as entrepreneurial leaders. What are their vision, mission, and core values? What is working and what isn’t? What plans, systems, and processes do they have in place? What is their immediate need?

According to Wikipedia, “business records are documents (hard copy or digital) that capture an act, condition, or event related to the business.” Business records are meant to build confidence and trust within the business, with customers, and with communities.

The act, condition, or business event triggers the need for documentation. We generate a sale, for example. The income is deposited in a business checking account. A bookkeeper records the deposit in an accounting system. More sales are recorded. A weekly financial report is tallied for a financial meeting. Meeting notes record the decisions made during the session, and new financial goals are projected. At the end of a fiscal year, an accountant uses the bookkeeping system to file tax reports for the IRS to determine how much is taxable income. The federal and state taxes we pay keep our society in order through public services such as the federal budget, social security, healthcare, public infrastructure, defense, etc.

Other business records include internal company policies and regulatory requirements for stockholders and investors. Having integrity with our business records means complete and accurate record-keeping that has uniformity throughout the business’s lifecycle.

Integrity is being truthful in what we think, feel, say, and do. For example, when everyone follows the same accounting principles, stakeholders have greater faith that the story those financial statements tell is trustworthy. Setting up systems, communications, and processes that support your business’s mission and core values encourages those working with you to record the act, condition, or event accurately.

Below are three of six ways to ensure integrity in your business records. I will share the other three next Monday. 

Three of six ways to ensure integrity in your business records.

1. Do a self-leadership integrity assessment.

Am I saying what I mean and doing what I say? Know your core values and ask yourself if you are living those values. If so, excellent. If not, identify your core values and commit to living them without compromising them in difficult circumstances. Allow yourself to get back on track. Recommit to living your values every day and keep going.

Imagine handling financial pressure with ease. Instead of succumbing to numbing, avoiding, or other coping vices, stay present. Identify how you feel, and determine what those feelings are trying to reveal; you may need to adjust your goals or initiate a sales activity to relieve some of the financial pressure. Decide the next best thing to do.

Example. My core values are wholeheartedness (compassion, connection, and courage) and respect.

Bookkeeping was not my forte when I started my business in 1992. It still isn’t, but I learned whom to hire and how to organize the volume of paperwork that accompanies business ownership.

In the beginning, I frequently became overwhelmed and let the paperwork pile up until it was a crisis. Crisis-to-crisis leadership was how I managed my business.

I realized that I needed help to shift my crisis-to-crisis leadership mentality by taking charge of how I was leading. My disorganization was disrupting my self-connection. Because I felt dysregulated, out of sorts, and stressed out all the time, my connections with others were strained. I not only needed a different mindset but a new skillset.

Fortunately, I ran entrepreneurial leadership LABs and held monthly synergy sessions. I started asking LAB participants if they needed help managing the volume of paperwork with their businesses. Everyone said ‘yes.’ I wasn’t alone in leading from crisis to crisis.

Owning my problem triggered a coordinated effort to learn how to be proactive. I hired organizational specialist and harpist Karen Kunzman to work with me first. She taught me an organizational system that I still use today. Once I learned her system, I encouraged clients to work with her and invited her to speak at monthly synergy sessions several times a year until she crossed over to the other side in 2002.

September 11, 2001, was the last day Karen and I worked together. She was our last synergy session presenter on what is known as the most traumatic day the United States experienced in a century. Suicide attackers hijacked four planes. Two of those planes flew into the World Trade Center Twin Towers, causing them to collapse.

Karen and I continued our three-hour session because we felt we weren’t in immediate danger, and the participants wanted to stay outside of one person who tried to collect and hug her children. Karen lingered after the session to talk. She had breast cancer and didn’t want anyone to know. I didn’t know this would be our last time together.

Karen’s organizational system lives on in me and those whom her life touched. I think of her often and feel compelled to acknowledge her beautiful impact on my life and the lives of others. She gave us skills for life and a new mindset. Once you know where you are going off track, developing a process, learning a new system, or creating a policy or procedure becomes an obvious answer. That is all it takes to generate positive change.