WHEN a foundation on a house is destroyed, the house cannot keep standing, it will crush to the ground.

When the foundations of a person's life are shaken, their life can become a total mess.

When the foundation of a church is shaken, it can be so bad. The same goes for the foundation of a marriage, family or an institution or a nation.

Some of us see cracks on the wall and we try to cover them. The truth however, is that, there is nothing wrong with the wall, it is the foundation that has gone.

Trying to patch up a cracking wall without going to the source of the crack is like trying to deal with the symptoms of a disease than seeking a cure.

You end up wondering why you are not solving your problems, it could be that you are dealing with the symptoms and leaving the root cause of the problem.

As humans, avoidance behaviour can sometime be safe but it's not sustainable. It does not solve the problem in as much as it can ameliorate it.

As an organisation, there are values that you have crafted to anchor your operations.

These have formed the culture of the organisation. The reason why you chose them is because you knew they make a difference somehow.

As a consultant, I have come across organisational values and so on, what is sad is how poorly they are adopted.

Failure to live by those values is the reason why we have so many corporate failures.

Values give the organisation an identity and they compose the DNA of the company.

A company just like an individual has behaviour that it conforms to and a company that does not enforce or live by its values is as confused as an individual's without values.

Values are the backbone of the organisation, they lay the foundation for consensus.

An organisation is composed of individuals with different value systems, different orientation and principle and there is need for a point of convergence, which is provided for by values.

Many a time we are called to do team building because the team has dissipated.

I believe when everyone in an organisation stops seeing the organisation as themselves but as the organisation, this limits the need for separate team building because people will be in agreement about the fundamentals, on the most important things.

Differences that emerge out of methods are easier to manage than from the fundamentals or from what the organisation stands for.

This is the same at personal level. When the foundations that hold and give true meaning to a person's life are disturbed, confusion sets in.

As a person, you should have values, they lay the foundations for your life. Your life can turn upside down if you do not have values.

When you are faced with temptation and lack the shield called values you can be trapped.

Lack of values and principles has resulted in early deaths due to AIDS which has killed so many dreams and has resulted in many immature marriages that did nothing more than increase the divorce rate in society.

Your values as a person must be aligned to the universal truth. They must protect you and not put you at risk.

Lack of values has resulted in many young productive men ending up providing labour in prisons instead of their families.

This is what happens when the foundations are being broken, the foundations of life.

Marriages break and children suffer, parents die early and children stop attending school and are relegated to generational poverty.

Foundations for life are critical and must be preserved at all cost. Values are like a sign on the road.

Live on values. Your life needs parameter, it needs pillars to lean on, and it needs guiding principles. Without this, meaning may be difficult to achieve.

This is key even at national level. The constitution of a land is the universal truth that everyone believes in and perceives to be fair.

It is the foundation of the nation. When it is violated, confusion sets in and problems arise.

When the foundations are destroyed, destruction follows.

Even in the church, when foundations are destroyed, the church suffers.

The Bible says exactly what the pillars of the church are. If someone violates them or abuses them, then problems arise.

We have seen many court battles arising out of churches, the reason why we have many churches today is because somebody felt violated and broke away.

No one is immune to the wrath of violated values. Success can only be for a short season.

Even in the broadest sense, hell is for people who break the values and principles of life that the creator has put in place.

Man has moved from the ideas of God. Principles and values are self-evident and self-validating and no one has power over them.

In as much as one can chose to live by values, once they are broken the consequences are beyond everyone's control.

It's like words, once they are spoken they cannot be taken back and one cannot controls the reaction or feelings of the person to whom those words were directed.

Hope you were inspired. See you next week as we continue to explore how we can become better people because only better individuals can become better leaders.

The SME Times Guest Author can be contacted at pascalnyasha@gmail.com.