Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor The Australian July 15, 2010 writes about the values and interestingly “virtues” inherent in maintaining universal standards of human rights and focuses on “former prime minister Kevin Rudd’s willingness to talk publicly about human rights in Beijing during his first visit there, and specifically to mention China’s brutal misrule in Tibet” arguing that “to do so expresses our values, which are universal values, and also safeguards our interests because it shows the Chinese that we have a bottom line in terms of values”.
Sheridan suggests that “Australia 
is generally seen in Asia as a mostly boring but well-run nation of beaches and good lifestyle and absolute rock-solid political and economic stability. We are still seen as a predominantly Anglo-Saxon country with all the Anglo-Saxon virtues, the chief of which are stability, pragmatism and a straightforward, non-ideological and unemotional empiricism in public life. Our temperament is seen as good-natured and doughty, stolid and tough and stable, virtues especially associated with our soldiers and our sportsmen, but also with our nation more generally. I remember a senior Indian official once telling me he thought Allan Border the quintessential Australian, dogged, courageous, unmovable.”
What are the bottom line values that underpin your business? Do your team members know that? Why don’t you ask them? What are you doing about the mismatch between what you think and what they believe?
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