If you’re running a company, and especially if you’re running a company you founded, I have one question for you.
Why are you doing it?
Seriously. Why do you do what you do? What are your top 1,2 or 3 reasons?
If high up in your reasons you don’t have some variation of “to create a place where people are happy to work”, then I’d suggest either you stop doing it, or you add that high up as a reason for doing what you do.
And more importantly, if you don’t let that directly influence your key decisions…
which are
(1) a “big” decision – client, team, strategy, etc, or
(2) the daily decisions which compound into making your company what it is
… then you’re not being true to a key need that everyone has.
That’s not to say each decision will be easy – it won’t.
Nor that hard work doesn’t need to happen – it does.
Nor that every minute of every working day is fun – it’s not.
Nor that hard conversations don’t need to happen – they do.
Nor that profit doesn’t need to be consistently made – it does.
Nor that everyone will be happy with all your decisions – they won’t.
But it IS to say that if you’re not intentionally working on making your team happy overall, if that’s not a key driver for you, then I don’t think your company deserves good employees.
And the key is “intentionally working on”. It’s not enough to want it, or to believe it. It needs active identifiable work.
There’s a better way to build companies. One where value gets created for customers, where people get paid fairly, where good profit is made, which in turn impacts those those who touch the company and give it future life.
And where people are happy to be there.
Build it. It IS possible. It HAS been done, and IS done by many.
How's 2022 going? Have you been able to step back and focus on strategy, on purpose, on scale? We're looking for an intimate beta group of CEOs (10 to 40 employees) to join us on this workshop to talk through our Build on Purpose framework for making strategy, purpose and values happen. If that's you, join us.