Does Your Business Have A Soul?

 

So does your business have a soul?

It might sound like a really strange question, but I believe really that every business has a soul and really more specifically, every business should have a soul.

For good or for worse, I believe each of us has a soul that really makes us unique. He makes us who we are. Because, you know, if we were all the same life would be pretty boring and get pretty boring very quickly.

When I'm talking about uniqueness here, I'm not referring to your company's USP, your unique selling proposition. This uniqueness goes really much deeper. It's really to the core of your company's values and its culture. Your team is the key to creating a more valuable business.

See, you don’t grow your business, your team does. Really selecting team members that really have very similar values and that are aligned to your values is really the key. That's the thing that really makes a difference. If you think about it, about all the people that you had to let go over the years, you're going to find that they have one thing that's really in common. That is, their values really didn't align with yours or the people on your team.

If you really think about it, the way you reveal the soul of your business is through developing your company's culture and you have to realize, whether you've identified it or not that your company does have a culture. If it's not defined by you, the business owner, it's going to be defined by the employees standing around in the break room or whatnot.

Actually, in ActionCOACH we have 14 different Points of Culture that guides us. We use these points of culture to help us to identify who we want to bring onto the team, the types of clients we want to attract as well as how we act towards our fellow team, members, clients, vendors, and even our competitors.

You can actually see our Points of Culture if you go to the about page on my website at actioncoachjax.com.

Tony Hsieh, the late CEO of Zappos, said that research has really shown that companies that have a higher purpose that have a some defined culture, outperformed their peer groups financially in the long run.

So in identifying, your company's points of value, there really are.. what we look at is four main areas that you want to cover. We have the owner of the leaders of the business, the business itself, the team, and the customers.

Here's actually a quick exercise that you can do to help you identify some of the values that are important in each of these areas.

So you and your leadership team, or if it's just you, should just sit down and try to brainstorm these answers to some of these 4 questions, and if you have a challenge, give me a holler. We could help you through this as well.

So, the first is…
(1) What are the 3 values that are important to you, the owners or the leaders of the organization?
(2) What are the three values that are important to the overall success of the business?
(3) What are the three values that really are important to the team overall?
(4) What are the important values or the 3 most important values that are important to your customers?

The number of values is really not important, some have more, some have less. Some values are actually defined in a very more specific way, like the ActionCOACH that you'll see if you go to our website, or in a more general way, like Zappos.

But once you've defined the values of your company you need to make them really stick. They can't just be a nice sign on the wall in the break room, and then you put it up there and you forget about it. They need to be internalized so that each employee should take ownership in these points of value, right? Points of Culture.

What I've done is I've coached my clients to continuously rate their employees on how well they live each point of culture and they're amazed at the difference it's really made in their organization.

Analyzing how well your culture is integrated into your business will give you great insights on how each team member is doing individually as compared to other teammates. You'll also be able to gage how the company as a whole is doing and living each point of culture. You might find that you may be in need of a team alignment.

To align your team to your company's points of value, or points of culture, and by identifying and focusing on your company's values, those points of culture, you’re truly going to find the soul of your organization and your company. Once you've discovered it, you will truly be a different type of company. The kind that really stands out from the competition.

If this business tip resonates with you and you want to learn more about how you can develop and improve your team culture schedule, a free strategy session with me and discover the possibilities.

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