DVS characteristics are reflected in how you regard others, including your staff, peers, and supervisors. They also involve how you look at opportunities, potential, and even setbacks. If you have DVS, you probably can identify with a number of the following:*

• You envision the potential; you visualize the possibilities and pursue the opportunities that will make your company and your customers more successful.
• You see the title “maverick” as a compliment.
• You believe that integrity matters.
• You ask, “Why can’t we …” at least weekly.
• You believe that the freedom to excel is more important than getting a reward for maintaining the status quo.

Regardless of their position or placement, DVS employees ask the core question, “How can I make my area a competitive advantage?” Whether it is marketing, IT, sales, production, quality control, customer service, human resources, accounting, or facilities management—you name it—that department can become a source of enhanced revenue or reduced cost for the company.

DVS involves the pursuit of what matters. It looks for opportunity. Often the concept is not fleshed out down to the details, but instead concentrates on an ultimate goal that will change the playing field. As such, the ideas themselves are works in progress that still have the potential for improvement as the program develops.

*You’ll have to purchase the book for the exhaustive list 🙂