Today, you are faced with challenges that yesterday’s business leaders could never have imagined. A tumultuous, rapidly changing global economy, a networked market and workforce, and a frequently shrinking margin all add up to more complexity and uncertainty in the world of business. And there’s no point in just riding out the storm. Things are only going to get more complicated and less predictable in the future. The old top-down, control-oriented ways of the past century just aren’t cutting it anymore. For your company to survive, let alone thrive, you must find new ways to engage your people and your customers.
Admittedly, it isn’t always easy to let go of the top-down method of leading. After all, you’re responsible for the results, and management has historically been trained to put controls in – not take them out. However, while every organization needs metrics and process, it also needs an environment – an energy — that inspires people to show up every day. A culture that enables meaning, belief, and enthusiasm around what you’re all building together.
If you’re similar to the 1,700 CEOs and leaders interviewed in the 2012 IBM CEO Study Leading Through Connections, what you need most for growth is innovation – new ideas, new value. Many organizations have done a decent job of adopting competitive human resources policies, technology systems, efficient processes, analytics, you name it. But, that’s not enough to awaken and rally the agile, creative minds of employees to see new possibilities.
In order to foster this kind of innovation and engagement, it has to be about way more than making money. Employees need a culture that is unified and energized around an inspired vision and a customer-centric mission. And, to provide a context for striving for the shared dream, they need a common set of values that they actually help co-create and can feel alive in the workplace every day. In other words, to create a genuine values-based organization, your people must be part of developing and expressing them.
Why start with vision, mission and values to drive top and bottom-line growth? Because a creating a culture of innovation and customer focus – of high performance — starts with meaning, belief, and optimism. And, those things happen in your people’s minds and hearts.
