To Grow Your Business You Must Grow Your People

Building a Breakaway Performance Architecture

I have found from my years of running a business that to establish healthy sustainable growth, today’s business leaders will need to draw on all of their talent, resources and wisdom to successfully compete in today’s whitewater world of change.  In fact, change is changing – it’s getting faster.  In order to accomplish this they will need to choose a precise value discipline, design a compelling value proposition, communicate their vision and strategy, lean out their operating model, and build a high performance culture that supports, facilitates and delivers all of the above to loyal customers.  

The way I see it, the function of a leader is to bring about change, whereas the function of a culture is to keep things the way they are.  The challenge for the leader is to understand this dichotomy and help shape the culture into one of commitment from people rather than mere compliance.  The goal is to create new and powerful cultural norms (attitudes, beliefs and behaviors) that support and deliver upon the current and future business strategies.  In short -- grow the business by growing the people!

Lets dig deeper. Leaders spend a great deal of time investigating and determining the appropriate business strategies and objectives for their organization, whether it is just-in-time inventory, lean manufacturing, quality control, sales plans, etc.  These are extremely important initiatives to get right; but, the greatest factor that effects the successful implementation and achievement of a business strategy and supporting initiatives is “the people”.  And, most leaders fail to fully define the value discipline of the organization, the underlying value proposition and the operating model to support it.  Without this, the company has no meaningful direction.  Even with the value discipline fully defined you are still only half way there. 

The other half is your people -- they can make the vision a reality or they can prevent it from happening.  One way to think of this is in terms of a metaphor… the seeds, the soil, and the harvest.

Each business strategy, goal, initiative, or project can be thought of as a seed.  The attitudes and behaviors of the people in the organization (the culture) can be thought of as the soil.  The strategy, objective, initiative or project will flourish if planted in the right type of soil and provided with water, sunlight and nutrients.  If the soil is well tended, nourished, and receptive, the seed will flourish.  If the soil is hardened, dry and lacking in nutrients, the seed will flounder.  The seed may begin to sprout, but will likely die — or more certainly, the seed will never reach its full potential.

What organizations really want and need in order to operate in today’s world is well-tended, fertile soil — a workforce filled with committed people: people who are ready and willing to go the extra mile and do whatever it takes to ensure that the organization they work for is successful.  If the soil (workforce) is well tended, all kinds of seeds (opportunities) can grow and flourish thus maximizing the harvest (business results).

The most important factor in building a great organizational culture (preparing the soil) is leadership.  The visible behaviors of leaders and the underlying assumptions they use to make decisions are powerful forces that are seen, felt, and experienced by people.

Creating an organization of high-performing and committed individuals is a serious leadership challenge.  If leaders are willing to accept this challenge then they will need to understand and believe in three truths about organizational change:

Organizational change does not begin until the people within the organization choose to change.

Change occurs quickly when the individuals in the organization accept change because they understand the value of the change to themselves.

Organizational change is most successful when the business strategy and culture strategy are integrated and aligned within the change effort.

For most leaders, it becomes overwhelming to try to develop and facilitate the design of an organizational cultural change process that addresses all of these complex variables while striving for healthy business growth.  This is precisely why so few change processes transform their work cultures into truly sustainable “breakaway performance.” 

Be a Breakaway!

Talk to you soon.

Mike Kerrison

Founder

Endurance America