How to Create a Powerful Business With Powerful People

We spend most of our waking adult lives at work, that’s an unfortunate truth. What is it all for though? To afford that one week of vacation that will leave you jetlagged, to have a nice car you only drive to work, or a house you rarely get to be in, or just to afford to live long enough to make it to the next paycheck?

It is so important to know why you are doing what you do, most people want to know that they are making an impact in some form or fashion. It changes a job into a career. Working a job day in and day out with no purpose is soul crushing and truly creates a drain on company morale and profits as well.

Company culture and vision are critical to going from a good company to a great company. Aligning your companies’ values and purpose with those of your employees creates a force that drives excellence.

Why is purpose important?

Imagine you had a car, and every wheel was pulling that car in a different direction, and on top of that they were all flat. Sure there is a driver, but no matter how skilled or passionate that driver is no real, meaningful progress will ever be made.

You can think of your business is like a super bus with hundreds of wheels all pointed in various directions. Everyone has their own goals and as they push and pull to fight their way toward those goals the tread wears and they take damage. The harder they are pulled against their path the more detrimental to their integrity until eventually there is a blowout or the wheel falls off. But before that happens there is a long road of misery and slowing down the whole bus.

Alignment

Communicating your company’s vision goals will help you to bring your team into alignment. A clear structure must be set by the leadership team and a vision should be established. This is your map and everyone is working toward the destination. Everything your business does should be done with the intention of progressing toward your companies goals.

Once your team knows where they are going and what they are working towards they are no longer working a job, they are on a mission. They are part of a purpose and when milestones get reached and goals are achieved the excitement is shared among everyone. Its no longer that the company hit its target, its WE did it!

Culture

With a clear, shared vision and goals employees begin to hold one another accountable. We succeed or we fail, and no one wants to fail.

However, even with all wheels driving toward a similar goal you may still have several that are “flat”. These are the employees that may like the goal and share the vision, but the culture and environment may be toxic or just nonexistent. In other words, they like what they do they just don’t like where they do it.

Your business needs a clearly defined culture to say “this is what we stand for” and “this is what working here should look like”. Accountability between team members is great, but if there is no clear culture it can quickly become an 80’s high school bullying scenario complete with swirlys and purple-nurples. Well, probably not that far if you have some sort of HR code of conduct, but my point is this- Define how success is acknowledged and how failure is addressed.

Additionally, define what the day to day life and feel of your organization should be. Are you straight laced and rigid, is it relaxed and fun, is it a culture that values integrity above all?

It can be a mix of things, but you and your team need to know what that is and leadership has to be the example and live up to that standard.

Together

Once you have your team all pointed in the same direction with a culture that supports their mission there will be no stopping them. You will be amazed at the progress and growth you see as an organization.