From me to you. We are emerging from one of the most self-absorbed eras in human history. The personality-driven way is dangerously egocentric. The Values Cycle is other-centered and seeks win/win combinations. It assumes that when we  help others to win, we all win. It recognizes that a proposition that is good for me but bad for you is, in the end, bad for both of us. It eschews egocentric forms of structure such as "self-directed teams," favoring instead a holistic, systems approach in which the members of any team are sensitive to their impact on all other parts of the system. The shift from ME to YOU assumes that a customer is more than a walking credit card.

For each of us, our mission is to meet the needs of employees, customers and suppliers, and if we do so brilliantly, all the time, we will be rewarded with a team of dedicated and loyal employees who no longer dread work but celebrate its rewards and have fun, a growing legion of customers who become our fans and a support team of suppliers who love doing business with us. More importantly, a shift from me to you offers a much needed balance to the preoccupations flowing from our personalities, by shifting our focus from increasing our market share, sales, cash flow or power to being of service to others and our planet.

From things to people. Helmsley, Milken and Trump perfected the science of questing for things. The genius of Western management has been our unsurpassed ability to acquire, measure, analyze and count things. But in revering analysis and acquisition we have forgotten that organizations are the sum of people not of things. Now, we must catch up by developing the soft technologies of The Values Cycle. The things approach obeys politics, procedures, policies, manuals, formal systems and salary levels. The things approach prompts retailers to forbid customers from taking more than three garments into a changing room. The people approach, as practiced by Don Cooper, a Toronto fashion retailer, is a sign proclaiming, "Please - take as many items into the change room as you wish." The things approach assumes that you can't trust people and that systems must be established to protect retailers, for example, from the dishonesty of customers. The people approach recognizes the universal desire of people to be trusted, respected and loved. In the Sanctuary, "people are our most important asset" is not a slogan but a genuine concept. Mechanical organizations have not yet made this discovery. If they really believed this much in the value of people, they would be included in the balance sheet. Some will suggest that goodwill is a means of defining the human asset in the balance sheet, but goodwill is a concept of the mind not of the heart. It is the personality's definition of people in the balance sheet, and a clumsy and inadequate measurement of the most precious asset in any organization of souls. Until we consider people to be a superior asset to things, we cannot be taken seriously when we proclaim, "people are our most important asset." The technology for doing so is known; the will to do so remains absent. 
 
"Shift from BREAKTHROUGH to KAIZEN"

From Breakthrough to Kaizen. The favorite heroes of management gurus are breakthrough specialists: great inventors, entrepreneurs, promoters and marketers. They are the hares who turn their innovative breakthroughs into personal fortunes, but we need to celebrate tortoises too - and just as passionately. As Aesop said, "Slow and steady wins the race." There are two ways to grow: by innovating (finding a different way) and kaizen (finding a better way).

The capacity to do the same thing a little bit better every day may not look like a spectacular achievement in the short run, but it is in the long run. The Japanese call this kaizen: Continuous improvement in personal life, home life, social life and work life, involving everyone. Kai-zen is a Japanese word that literally translates into "better way." But it is not simply a Japanese idea; it is an intelligent idea. It is an attitude that honors the act of micro-excellence achieved through daily personal mastery and learning.

A kaizen team at a ball bearing manufacturer detected a minor problem on the assembly line. Bearings of different sizes were dropped from a hopper on the assembly line, into the boxes that were eventually sold in stores. The entire process of production and packaging was automated. But customers were complaining that sometimes they got a box containing no ball bearings. This would occur once in every 100,000-200,000 boxes (a quality ratio that most Western executives can only dream about). Although the cost of replacing empty boxes after delivery was minimal, the kaizen team convinced the company that inclusion of the empty box itself could seriously damage the company's reputation.

The kaizen team originally suggested installing an X-ray system to detect the empty boxes, but they abandoned this idea because of its high cost. They tried many other ideas but these failed to meet cost/benefit criteria. After discussing it further, they came up with the solution: a small $9.99 fan. They installed it at the side of the assembly line so that it blew the empty (and therefore lighter) boxes right off the line. Later they upgraded the process by using pressurized air that was readily available in the factory. Now, with minimal expense, the company was error-free - 100% of the time. The kaizen team practiced what the Japanese call warusa-kagen: things that are not yet problems, but are still not quite right. All values honor the needs of others, but Kaizen is a process for doing so.

Such dedication to continuous improvement propels organizations to excellence and builds the self-esteem of individuals and teams. While acknowledging the importance of being a world class innovator (by finding a different way), The Values Cycle recognizes that it is just as important to practice kaizen (by finding a better way). This subtle difference propels outstanding individuals and therefore organizations into a class of their own.

From weaknesses to strengths. Researchers claim that during an average business meeting each idea introduced is met with nine criticisms. According to Dr. Marilyn L. Kourilsky, former dean for teacher education at UCLA's Graduate School of Education, 97% of U.S. kindergarten children think creatively, only 3% form their thoughts in a conforming, structured manner. By the time they complete high school, the balance has begun to shift - 46% think creatively while a more rigid, structured style is preferred by 54%. The process of losing our individuality, passion and creativity is completed in the workplace: by the time we are 30, a mere 3% enjoy the freedom of practicing holistic, original thought processes, while 97% of us subject all our thinking to a structure which screens for orthodoxy and social correctness - "group-think." In other words, we begin our lives honoring the magic of questions but eventually, by overlooking questions and only being open to answers, we fall under a spell of spiritual impotence. We do not start out thinking like traditional managers - it is something that we acquire. By criticizing, judging and jeering we suck the self-esteem from the souls of individuals and therefore organizations. When we get the financial statements, we immediately hunt for the red ink, the brackets, and the negative performance data. Too seldom, do we celebrate our strengths or study and perfect our successes. By mistakenly placing our faith in the Aristotelian notion that by attacking ideas we will strengthen them, we have perfected our mechanical skills of rational thinking and criticism. But imagine if every person and every organization devoted as much passion and time to building on their strengths: our souls would begin healing until we became awesome.

Psychologist, James Loehr, has helped to train, among others, tennis great, Martina Navratilova. Loehr has studied what the best tennis players do when they take a 20-second break between points during a match. Loehr discovered that mediocre players use that time to react to the previous point - scolding themselves, after a missed point, for example. The best players, Loehr found, spend the time preparing for the next point, relaxing, energizing themselves, planning their strategy and tuning their minds.

From Competition, Hostility and Fear to Love. Winning has come to mean defeating one's opponent - it seems there must always be a loser. Metaphors of war spike the vocabulary of modern leadership. One of the highest paid speakers on the rubber chicken circuit is "Stormin'" Norman Schwarzkopf who earns $75,000 each time he tells business executives that leading a business team is the same as leading a war machine. Aspiring leaders devour titles such as The Art of War for Executives, Marketing Warfare, The Leadership Secrets of Atilla the Hun and How to Swim with the Sharks. The first of these books, which is based on the teachings of Sun Tzu, a Chinese military expert from 2,500 years ago, advises us that, "The secret of deception is knowing how to manipulate an enemy's perceptions" and "Fighting many is the same as fighting few". Life has become an endless competition, in which we are all gladiators at some level, seeking to vanquish our opponents (who in truth are our colleagues) at school, work, home - even within our own country.

Life is not a battleground - it's a playground. War or the fear of losing does not motivate people. We would rather be alive serious than dead serious. Virtuoso performances are romanced from people not beaten out of them. If we love what we do (Mastery), love the people with whom we do it (Chemistry), and love the reason for doing it (Delivery), would we still call it work? People are inspired to do what they do well by the love they feel for what they do (Mastery), by the people they do it with (Chemistry), and by their reasons for doing it (Delivery).  ... for more information please read the section on Kaizen, link provided below.

Source Credit to:   http://whybedo.org/freetools_assessment_vcl_definition.php