I was talking to a colleague the other day about how I don’t really work with “boring businesses” anymore. In my mind, being boring has nothing to do with industry. Rather, it’s a business that provides a product or service that’s just fine and provides decent jobs for its employees, but there’s no drive or hunger from leadership to do any more than that. They might be profitable for now, but there’s just no… magic.
And there’s nothing necessarily wrong with having a boring business. But most of the leaders I work with are playing a different game. They’re building something remarkable.
A product or service that delights those who buy it and brings measurable value.
A client experience that people can’t wait to tell their friends about.
A work culture where people become fanatic ambassadors for the brand and never want to leave.
These things don’t happen accidentally. They take time and effort to create and sustain. They’re the result of values-driven decisions and an aligned team where everyone is moving towards a shared vision of excellence. It takes…
Clear and frequent communication about your vision of excellence to every member of the team.
Naming your core values and explicitly weaving them into every little thing you do.
Deciding on the most important results to work toward every quarter and managing to those results. (Which means letting go of the 5,897 other things you could’ve worked on.)
Explicitly training your new team members on what it looks like to embody your core values on the job.
Giving new team members clarity on “what success looks like” from day one.
Implementing systems where team members have frequent opportunities to receive AND give feedback.
Adopting hiring practices that systematically screen for alignment to your core values and strengths in the skills needed for each role in your business.
Identifying leading and lagging indicators of success and excellence for every area of your business and regularly using that data to drive decisions.
Loudly celebrating when team members embody your core values and quickly addressing anything that runs counter to them.
…. just to name a few.
Building a remarkable business isn’t easy. But it will never happen if you don’t take the first step: Decide to do it.