Fortress Your Heart
At the Fortress Companies we want to be properly motivated when it comes to pursing our goals, developing our products and meeting the needs of our customers. This is what it means to "Fortress Your Heart."
Proper Motives and Attitudes for Pursuing our Goals
Obviously, it is important for us to have goals and objectives—long terms, short term, mid term--in all the domains of life. But we believe it is equally important to be clear about the reason behind all those goals. Fortress Living is based on the confidence that there is a God who made us and who gave us rules for life to follow, it is not surprising that our underlying motive for all our goals should be to do what this God wants us to do.
The value statements that we are discussing right now can be seen as targets at which we are shooting our arrows each day: each day we do business we want to think accurately, we want to have right motives, we want to act properly. Rarely will we hit the bullseye every time. But that doesn’t mean we don’t keep it in our sights.
Proper Motives and Attitudes about Others
In the Fortress Companies we have articulated Customer Service in terms of an acronym: G.I.V.E. We gall it the “GIVE Method” of customer satisfaction. Pursuing each of these is the way to experience Fortress Living.
G - Generosity – When others are around us they must experience the old truth that it is “more blessed to give than to receive” and that this person or company gives more than it takes. Fortressing your heart means that you are a generous person, putting the interests of others above your own.
I - Inquisitiveness – Others must truly believe that the we listen and care about the things that are important to them. In practical terms, this means we listen twice as much as we speak. At the Fortress Companies, sales personnel are monitored on a regular basis to make sure we practice active listening sills. Problems are addressed in a constructive, practical way, never avoided for fear of offending someone.
V - Vitality – People must feel “vitalized” (the word means, “given-life”) by their relationship with us. The opposite is when
they feel depleted or drained. One of the greatest ways of vitalizing another person is giving them hope. When we give people hope that their greatest problems in life can be solved, and then make every effort to deliver on our commitments, people don't feel like we are stealing life from them but giving life back.
E - Efficiency – Others must not feel “stressed” because of their interactions with us. For example, in a company such as ours, one of the things that causes customers stress in relationships is an inefficient operation—delays in processing orders, failure to return phone calls, mistakes in shipments, etc. Most companies do not set out to disappoint their customers. They truly want to serve them. But inefficiencies in the operation are often so troublesome that they cannot help it. Efficiency becomes a crucial way of respecting and valuing others.
The motive behind our service is to GIVE. Although in the process of giving in this way we will benefit in many ways, that is not our primary reason for doing it. Our primary motive in giving is that, by so doing, we fulfill the purposes of the God who commanded us to give.
Click here to find out how to Fortress Your Actions
Proper Motives and Attitudes for Pursuing our Goals
Obviously, it is important for us to have goals and objectives—long terms, short term, mid term--in all the domains of life. But we believe it is equally important to be clear about the reason behind all those goals. Fortress Living is based on the confidence that there is a God who made us and who gave us rules for life to follow, it is not surprising that our underlying motive for all our goals should be to do what this God wants us to do.
The value statements that we are discussing right now can be seen as targets at which we are shooting our arrows each day: each day we do business we want to think accurately, we want to have right motives, we want to act properly. Rarely will we hit the bullseye every time. But that doesn’t mean we don’t keep it in our sights.
Proper Motives and Attitudes about Others
In the Fortress Companies we have articulated Customer Service in terms of an acronym: G.I.V.E. We gall it the “GIVE Method” of customer satisfaction. Pursuing each of these is the way to experience Fortress Living.
G - Generosity – When others are around us they must experience the old truth that it is “more blessed to give than to receive” and that this person or company gives more than it takes. Fortressing your heart means that you are a generous person, putting the interests of others above your own.
I - Inquisitiveness – Others must truly believe that the we listen and care about the things that are important to them. In practical terms, this means we listen twice as much as we speak. At the Fortress Companies, sales personnel are monitored on a regular basis to make sure we practice active listening sills. Problems are addressed in a constructive, practical way, never avoided for fear of offending someone.
V - Vitality – People must feel “vitalized” (the word means, “given-life”) by their relationship with us. The opposite is when
they feel depleted or drained. One of the greatest ways of vitalizing another person is giving them hope. When we give people hope that their greatest problems in life can be solved, and then make every effort to deliver on our commitments, people don't feel like we are stealing life from them but giving life back.
E - Efficiency – Others must not feel “stressed” because of their interactions with us. For example, in a company such as ours, one of the things that causes customers stress in relationships is an inefficient operation—delays in processing orders, failure to return phone calls, mistakes in shipments, etc. Most companies do not set out to disappoint their customers. They truly want to serve them. But inefficiencies in the operation are often so troublesome that they cannot help it. Efficiency becomes a crucial way of respecting and valuing others.
The motive behind our service is to GIVE. Although in the process of giving in this way we will benefit in many ways, that is not our primary reason for doing it. Our primary motive in giving is that, by so doing, we fulfill the purposes of the God who commanded us to give.
Click here to find out how to Fortress Your Actions