CULTURE DESIGN EQUALS SUCCESS

 

A MOST IMPRESSIVE LEADER

If you haven't heard of Zappo's Shoe company... you will. Not only have they created a multi million dollar business, they have done it primarily on the concept of building "The Ultimate Organizational Culture."  This video offers business leaders such as yourself... evidence to spend time, money, and energy empowering your employees.

I am particularly impressed with their recruiting protocol, the story of the satisfied customer with a terminally ill mother (you may have heard this b4), and the fact that they moved the entire operation from the bay area (technology) to Las Vegas (fun & hospitality culture) simply to enhance their organizational culture.  This is a Culture is Cool HOT PICK !

 

 

Did you know that in 1998, the now Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh (shay) sold his company LinkExchange to Microsoft for $265 Million... he was only 24 years old. Here is a great article that tells his story.

Remember: Employee Engagement =s Increasing Sales. Think about Culture Design as your only competitive advantage. Employees want to work there and customers serve as evangelists! You can make this happen.

 

What are your thoughts on this video... this company... its culture? Let everyone know by clicking the "comments" link below. 

Engage Your Passion,

 

~M

 

 

A MOST IMPRESSIVE LEADER

If you haven't heard of Zappo's Shoe company... you will. Not only have they created a multi million dollar business, they have done it primarily on the concept of building "The Ultimate Organizational Culture."  This video offers business leaders such as yourself... evidence to spend time, money, and energy empowering your employees.

I am particularly impressed with their recruiting protocol, the story of the satisfied customer with a terminally ill mother (you may have heard this b4), and the fact that they moved the entire operation from the bay area (technology) to Las Vegas (fun & hospitality culture) simply to enhance their organizational culture.  This is a Culture is Cool HOT PICK !

 

 

Did you know that in 1998, the now Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh (shay) sold his company LinkExchange to Microsoft for $265 Million... he was only 24 years old. Here is a great article that tells his story.

Remember: Employee Engagement =s Increasing Sales. Think about Culture Design as your only competitive advantage. Employees want to work there and customers serve as evangelists! You can make this happen.

 

What are your thoughts on this video... this company... its culture? Let everyone know by clicking the "comments" link below. 

Engage Your Passion,

 

~M

 

The Next Generation of Excellence

Everything in business and in life has become so damned complicated.

Even washing your car requires sophisticated loops of technology that simply take my time and energy. With all of the advantages that come with technology, we seemed to have lost our sense of simplicity.

No wonder people don't take your sales calls or want to do business with you... just to comprehend the value you offer takes a significant amount of time and energy... of which people have very little of.

             The Next Generation Of Excellence Is Among Us

The Next Generation Of Excellence consists of those who have developed styles, systems, and protocols of communication with the ability to capture and hold the busy professional's attention. Business has become complex, yet we must remember to keep it simple.

People have a need, problem or desire that they need attended to... the secret is to meet the need, solve the problem, or fullfill the desire quickly and effectively.  Often we get so caught up in our pursuit to strategize and theorize that we forget the very reason people will do business with us.

We meet their needs.

Sometimes beating the competition requires complex strategies and solutions, but let's remember for our customer's sake to keep it simple.

The Authenticity Of A Core Values Business Model

Rituals are powerful. The epitome of communication in action... and like any communication, must stem from foundational intentions that are real. When this process is adopted and integrated, you are engaging in systems that not only attract and retain customers, but inspire and illuminate employees.

Like never before, consumers are surveying the horizon with the ability to ignore sizzle & hype. They look out across the plains of experience, searching for something they know is within their reach... but they have grown immune to outlandish promises and attention grabbing slight of hand communication techniques. Sizzle & hype is so ingrained in our psyche that most business leaders struggle with leaving it behind while in their own lives join the millions who continue to abhor (and ignore) the very techniques they use.

Structuring your business with systems and models that attract customers is not only an indication of intelligence it is also an indication of your desire to stand tall among giants. The business giants of tomorrow aren’t those with billion dollar payrolls but those who will deliver extraordinary value to customers while remaining socially responsible. They will radiate an authenticity that maximizes customer involvement and attracts the talented and insightful as potential employees.

Building Your Business Upon Core Values

One must first build the foundation of your business (and rituals) upon Core Values. I designed the Core Values Business Model™ for those business leaders who yearn to make a difference in the lives of their employees & customers. This model takes us out of the habit of imitating and into an entirely new direction of radiating.

All persuasive and meaningful communication stems from its foundational intentions. Even persuasion experts like Dave Lakhani and Kenrick Cleveland will tell you that the difference between persuasion and manipulation lies in a communicator’s intentions. Meaningful communication that stirs the emotions must come from a foundation of real... and since our businesses communicate on multiple layers through our products, services, personnel, etc. we must build these systems on an authentic foundation. Most consultants and business leaders intuitively attempt this through their “Vision Statement” but without an understanding or commitment to the use of Rituals to reinforce these values, usually don’t see meaningful results. 

This is a small business model, designed for organizations that have one person who makes the decisions. And for those of you who desire the emotional and financial rewards of becoming a Ritual Builder first need to decide on your Core Values as an individual.

These are the values that I will spend the rest of my life integrating into my Grainger Leadership Institute LLC, D/b/a All About Teamwork business systems. These are the values that will attract those that will most value the solutions and services that I provide. There will be many who will not feel these values resonate within... and there will be many who do. I want customers who are predisposed to value my services... who share my core values.

When I work with clients on this business model, they often find themselves in the crux of a spiritual conflict... unsure of their Core Values. This can take several weeks to fully define... but the process in itself makes you a more authentic person who communicates from a foundation of your real beliefs. Not only does this make you a better leader and more persuasive communicator... but it creates around you a bright light that radiates across the horizon as someone who stands for something real. And that will forever remain the most attractive component of the human experience.

Pay My Outside Sales Reps How?

Before you know it you are swept away as the chocolate cherry cheesecake touches your tongue and alters your mind.  The experience is so damn gratifying you stop to take it all in... letting each taste bud relish in the moment. Your senses are truly indulged and you know you’re balancing on the brink of sin. The powerful combination of sugar and ecstasy rush to your temples... taking you to a new state of bliss... And you said you’d never “get high” again. 

So how much of the “pie” should you be paying your sales people?  For the sake of profit I hope it’s enough to be mind altering.  The sales professional is definitely an odd individual that is usually money motivated and finds it a little difficult to “fit in” to your culture, especially the culture of a small business.  But ask yourself; doesn’t it take an odd individual to endure an average 14.6 rejections a day?  How much would you expect to get paid to endure day-in and day-out rejection like that? During the start up phase of a sales professional new to your business or industry, relationships have not yet been established. During this time, it’s not uncommon for even a seasoned sales person to hear an average 63 rejections to every one legitimate contract.  Would this make you feel like you are off to a good start for the company that just hired you?

“The landscape of sales is changing so drastically...

...that it’s enough to kill any good buzz.”

I can hear the echoes of delight from your new hire, “Oh my new sales job is great, I haven’t gotten one appointment this week, no one returns my calls, my customers are rude, and I my boss wants immediate results.”

Your sales department is the most complex system within your business and to orchestrate this system with grace and finesse, it seams you need the skills and experience of a “Winning Coach” fused with the patience and insight of a Practicing Psychiatrist. As the bearer of bad news I’m here to tell you, “The landscape of sales is changing so drastically... ...that it’s enough to kill any good buzz.”

COMPENSATION

How many sales people are you going through each year? Do you truly understand what it takes to be successful in sales?  Do you know the most common objection your new sales rep is going to get their first day representing your firm?  Is there is a consistent level of turnover within the sales department?

These frustrations are more indicative of a breakdown or flaw inherent in the structuring of your sales job opportunity than in your hiring choices. You might hire the right person, but your sales model is geared toward failure. Small business owners as well as big business aren’t structuring selling opportunities compelling enough to keep or develop the “BIG FISH”. To achieve success in the changing landscape of sales you need a school of “BIG FISH”. The days of hiring a “ROCK TURNER” to knock on doors and discover interest is over.  Competition is so stiff, that your sales people need a comprehensive program that assists and supports all of their sales efforts while simultaneously communicating the point of difference that your product or service has over the competition. Without this system, your new associate will have challenges in simply landing appointments... and without appointments... comes the powerful feelings of failure. The nature of success in sales today is only accomplished with a system that honors your customer and spans through time.

So what does this system look like? We’ll cover the details in tomorrow’s post but these are the ingredients; Innovative Job Description, Compensation Package, & Success Coaching Management.

Humanistic.... Or Mechanistic (Part 2)

In yesterday’s post, we discussed the sociological impact that the mechanistic practices of business are having upon the lives of your labor force. No longer are employees willing to be simple spokes in the wheels that move business... they need meaning, purpose, and passion in their work. My experience tells me that when organizations deliberately provide this (through a commitment to professional development training)... something magical begins to happen.

This goes beyond team building; personifying the epitome of Corporate Synergy and touching on the fringes of Collective Intelligence.  When people have passion and purpose around the work that they do... organizations will experience it where it matters to them most... the bottom line.

There are two reasons for this.

1. People only operate from a place of self-interest
2. Philosophically there is movement among leadership circles where the purpose of business is being re-visited and re-evaluated.

Neither one of which are complicated, but do require some explanation.

FACT: Employees have a secret desire to be business savvy and possess the business skills that create industry dominance.

A Changing Labor Force

As you hear these words, hundreds of thousands of employees are sitting in their cubicles right now searching the Internet for a better employment opportunity... and they are finding it. Whether it be; a self-employment opportunity, a related industry or the competition, the demand for competent help is so massive, that the new competitive arena in business is the pursuit to attract, keep and develop talent.

The Machine itself has created a massive need for the expression of meaning within the lives of its humanistic parts... If this need where among your consumer base, millions of dollars would be poured into R & D, and in 90 days to 6 months the rush to market with goods and services would ensue.  But because it is NOT your consumer base, this need will continue to go unmet. 

The future will bring demands for a talented workforce that are so strong, that eventually businesses will be forced to find a way to meet this humanistic need for purpose and meaning as a recruiting and retention tool.

The Ritual Builders blog has an intention of providing & discovering proven concepts that are intoxicating and effective because they philosophically shift the consciousness of “The Machine”. What exciting things will begin to happen when organizations shift their thinking and commit to human capital systems that stimulate personal responsibility and self-directed effort!  When you do this among individuals within the structure of a high performance team, something truly magical begins to appear.

Tomorrow’s Professional Development Looks Different

Business skills are sorely lacking in organizations today.  Even high level executives are pathetic at running and executing a simple meeting, why else are employees so reluctant to attend? In the New Economy, the best sort of compensation that you can offer your labor force is an education in the skills that make their lives more successful. The best place to learn these skills is at work... and within the structures of a team.

Here’s why... Once your employees realize that “The Machine” exists not only to produce profit, but to produce skilled, enlightened, and self-actualized professionals, you have a labor force that recognizes cause and effect relationships between “Corporate Mandates” and their own individual need to pursue meaning and purpose in life. When you bring these together, you have power and with it an increase in loyalty, performance and profit.

Humanistic... Or Mechanistic? (Part 1)

Employees burn out and check out when their daily lives are about “Feeding the Machine”. 

“The Machine” is a perfect metaphor for the way executives have been looking at business.  Generating profit is what the machine is built to do.  You see a machine finds efficiency in the perfect execution of order and in an effort to meet the demands of shareholders and our entrepreneurial aspirations; we’ve mechanized the process of business.

This model was ideal in the late 80’s and early 90’s when it allowed us to use technology as a means to capitalize on an emerging global market.  However we are entering a tail spin where “The Machine” has created a sociological quandary in which the humanistic pieces are wound way too tight.  Businesses are living, breathing entities... with an identity and a soul. Innately business... is about people and the lives that they lead.  Individuals function most effectively when money isn’t even involved. The concept of profit is basically mechanical and remains an enigma to even the most motivated and successful VP who, like the janitor, is over-mortgaged and stressed with credit card dept. 

Money and profit is a mechanistic concept perpetuated by those that operate the machine as a mechanism for power, and control.  Although we remain under the ether and at the mercy of “The Matrix”... for the first time, we collectively comprehend that it truly exists. It is within this comprehension that a social change is taking place within the consciousness of the labor force.

A Sociological Quandary

We know we  are stuck... in order to “live life” we have a two income family so that we can live in the neighborhood, drive the vehicles, belong to the social groups we desire and on Monday start our week, once again... feeding "The Machine." It’s a seemingly endless cycle that is eating away at the souls of Americans and they are starting to get fed up. They’re asking themselves the question... is this all there is to life? ...and deep down they recognize the answer...  is NO.

Business is about profit.  And while that remains a constant, it also remains a significant problem. What’s in it for me... employees ask?

I don't think that anyone questions the purpose behind any professional development program should be about acquiring the very skills that allow your team to produce more and better results... in other words... INCREASE PROFIT.

Yet so few organizations invest in "business design" training that allow the skills of their labor-force to go from theory to application.  Some organizations get it... most do not. Through the development of better people comes better organizations... better business. We must become more mindful of the complexities of human development and how to infuse this into our corporate mandates of professional development training.

Better Business & Social Responsibility

Professional development is an awesome industry... evolving in its own right to a level of pushing individuals beyond "career success" to pursue and mature personally and spiritually as well.

In reality I see the "improvement movement" becoming a "spiritual movement". This makes sense because deep down each and everyone of us are spiritually starved; eventually  realizing that life becomes a journey of defining for ourselves... this spiritual path. What would happen if organizations became a conduit for pursuing this path with intention?

The Global market place is an optimal space for small business to capitalize on this most authentic of human needs.  Professional development is becoming a mandatory component of business success but my experiences dictates that small and big business is missing the fundamental opportunity within professional development training to ignite the lives and careers of their labor force.  Passion and purpose is not only the missing component of most organizations(because they're mechanical)... it is also the missing component of our lives(because we are so influenced by the organizations within our lives).

There are two reasons this single distinction can revolutionize company culture... a culture poised for peak performance and profit. 

These will be the discussion of tomorrow's post... until then... let your mind & heart explore the far reaching benefits of professional development to business, society, and the individual lives of those who live within them.