But they don’t make sense.
What’s to be gained by throwing away good food and valuable tools?
Why would undeveloped Neanderthals bury their dead with such ceremony?
Authors Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton from
For thousands of years, our species has searched for meaning in being part of something bigger than ourselves. It is part of the human condition; we all want to be a contributing part of a community—whether civic, religious, ethnic, political, or social.
We all strive to believe in something.
What’s the implication?
There’s a path to a hidden reservoir of drive and dedication in your people, a process from which seeds of a strong culture can begin to grow.
The Belief Factor: The Secret Sauce That Makes a Culture Contagious
Belief at work is a choice.
Leaders too often ask their people to agree with the strategies, policies, and goals of their culture without really knowing how to persuade them.
Have you ever heard someone say of a leader, “
Many organizations don’t understand the power of Purpose. Yet they probably have leaders in their organizations who instill this, “walk through walls” attitude, inspiration, and loyalty.
Unfortunately, when a leader like this walks out the door, his team’s loyalty, dedication, and determination usually leave with them.
Why Power
As we’ve shared in Willpower Rules Your Performance, willpower is finite. Why power breaks down walls, walks through walls, and gets shit done.
Purpose/Why Power is a force multiplier, an intangible factor increasing performance through inspiration.
Forget about willpower. It’s time for why-power.
Your choices are only meaningful when you connect them to your desires and dreams. The best leaders and organizations understand this.
In a 2001 study by the University of California at Los Angeles’s Eric Flamholtz on a midsize industrial firm with twenty divisions all doing similar work. He discovered the departments whose behavior was most consistent with the company’s desired culture had a better financial performance. The lower-performing divisions did not have cultural buy-in. The findings for this $800 million firm were so striking the company immediately added “effective culture management” to every manager’s performance management system and bonus calculation.
The level and impact of just one manager might shock you.
Employees are more insistent than ever that their managers see into the future and do a decent job of addressing the coming challenges and capitalizing on new opportunities.
Before employees will buy into a culture, they must be able to answer the WIIFM question: “What’s in it for me?”
In the highest-performing cultures, leaders not only create high levels of engagement—manifest in strong employee attachment to the company and a willingness to give extra effort—but they also create environments that support productivity and performance, in which employees feel enabled. And finally, they help employees feel a greater sense of well-being and drive at work; in other words, people feel energized.
Best Leaders Ask Two Questions
The best leaders regularly ask themselves two questions:
E + E + E
Three ways employees must feel for you to have a true culture of belief: engaged, enabled, and energized.
Engaged. They understand how their work benefits the larger organization. Have a clear understanding of how they are responsible and accountable for real results. They can see the value of their contributions to the company’s larger mission.
Enabled. The company supports employees with the right tools and training. Leaders spend 75 percent of their time coaching and walking the floor to ensure that workers can navigate the demands of their jobs.
Energized. Leaders maintain feelings of well-being and high levels of energy through daily productivity contests, helping employees balance work and home life. They recognize individual contributions. At American Express, nearly 20,000 times a month employees are praised for effort or rewarded for results.
Growth demands Strategic Discipline.
Building an enduring great organization requires disciplined people, disciplined thought, disciplined action, superior results, producing a distinctive impact on the world.
Discipline sustains momentum, over a long period of time, laying the foundations for lasting endurance.
Meeting Rhythms achieve a disciplined focus on performance metrics to drive growth.
Let Positioning Systems help your business achieve these outcomes on the Four most Important Decisions your business faces:
DECISION |
RESULT/OUTCOME |
PEOPLE |
|
STRATEGY |
|
EXECUTION |
|
CASH |
Positioning Systems helps mid-sized ($5M - $250M+) businesses Scale-UP. We align your business to focus on Your One Thing! Contact dwick@positioningsystems.com to Scale Up your business! Take our Four Decisions Needs Assessment to discover how your business measures against other Scaled Up companies. We’ll contact you.
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