Are You Investing in Excellence?

To really kick-off 2023 with a bang, I had the pleasure of being a guest on the "Focus Forward Business Podcast" hosted by Sturdy McKee. You can find it on Apple, Google, iHeart Radio and Anchor.fm.

What I'm really passionate about is purpose and connecting your company's purpose with the hearts and minds of your employees and your customers.

I call it creating a sticky organization.

It's term I borrowed from the marketing industry in creating stickiness - messages that convey why your services and products are special and that 'stick' with your potential customers.

Let's face it. There is a war for talent right now in almost every industry. I see it and hear about it every day from my clients.

A Sticky Organization starts with you.

A sticky organization is one that aligns purpose and vision with everyone in your company. How do they know what the purpose and vision are?

You first have to have clarity about why you're in business, why you come to work every day and why you love what you do.

Then I recommend you brainstorm with your leadership team to create clarity and alignment. And once you have those, you tell everyone in the organization so they can see the connections to their role in contributing to the purpose and vision.

But you're not done there. You see, people forget. So you have to remind them - consistently and frequently are best - at all levels.

And as much as you love your customers, well they are how you keep the lights on, stickiness is as important if not more so for your employees.

You may be asking about now: okay, how do I do that?

I have a few ideas about that (check out the Focus Forward Business Podcast). Here are a few of the highlights:

❤️ Get clarity and alignment of your company's 'Why'. What is it that you love about why your company or organization is unique? What do you believe in? Vision and purpose start with you.

🔐 Unlock the power of your culture. This requires that you clearly identify the actions and behaviors that define it based on what you all believe and hold sacred.

🎉 Harness the power of appreciation. People are people not cogs in a wheel. Show you appreciate them. And the least costly way to do that is just L-I-S-T-E-N.

💡 Awareness and recognition - all business is about relationships. Probably should be the first point to consider.

📍From Tom Peters (Excellence Now: Extreme Humanism) -

"Hard (Numbers/Plans/Org Charts) is soft. Soft (People, Relationships/Culture) is hard."

Far too many companies invest too little

time and money in their soft-edge excellence.

Maybe it's time to the hard work and the heavy lifting to lead our colleagues, cohorts, teams and people and inspire them to achieve greater heights than they imagined.

You can access the Focus Forward Business Podcast here or where ever you listen to your podcasts.

Until next time.