Success comes to those who are willing and able to put in the hard work to outcompete all others. But what does it take to muster that commitment across an entire workforce? Success in business is not achieve by one or a few individuals, it is achieved through the combined effort and talent of everyone working within and with a business. This is the business you must be, to bring your full potential to the forefront.
Who Does My Business Need To Be To Excel?
Over this season of December 2020 and January 2021, we are pausing and reflecting on the question of ‘Whom your business needs to be to excel – to outperform all others in your chosen marketplace’? In this four-part series, we will highlight key articles that will support you to reimagine, and rebuild, your business to be competitively stronger than ever before.
Part Two: Competing
Every day your team goes out to compete against other businesses who are seeking to win the same customers. They all know each other well so what is it that will allow one business to consistently outcompete all others? It is a business that cannot only see and define a customer value that will outcompete, but also a business that can deliver on that promise today and importantly tomorrow. Here are three articles that will assist you get a handle on the type of business you must become:
1. A ‘For People’ Business
There are many ways we describe a business in an attempt to reflect where its focus may be – for-profit, not-for-profit, triple bottom line, public, private – and so the list may continue. But for a business that wishes to excel, to bring its greatest potential to the forefront, there is only one path, and that is to create a ‘for-people’ business.
Active Knowledge Questions: Profit, TBL, not-for profit; is there a way you think of your business? And how does that support the performance of your business?
2. Who Are Your Most Valuable Employees?
There likely exists within your leadership team a ‘mental map’ of how people within your business should be viewed. A framework that views some people as being more valuable than others, whose roles are considered vital and who are seen to contribute more to the success of the business than others. This map profoundly impacts the way in which your business operates and its performance. And in many instances leads to underperformance.
Active Knowledge Question: Is one employee more valuable than another, and if so, why?
3. In What Do You Have Courage?
Success in life, in leadership and in business requires courage. And we all have courage within us, but we tend to think of courage in the extremes, and that perception can weaken our ability to achieve our potential. Courage enables us to the step forward into the unknown, into uncertainty where risk lives, and that is where potential is discovered and unlocked. Within us, and within everyone we connect with, we should be stoking courage to enable achievements and success for everyone at every level.
Active Knowledge Question: As a leader, how do you activate courage within everyone involved in your business so that their, and its, real potential can be lifted to the forefront?
People are successful and business are successful because of the people within them. There is a personality that must be built in any business that wishes to excel to its peak performance and beyond. It is the workings of the competitive engine within a business that will mould and condition it to succeed.
Previous Parts:
An entirely new level of performance.
Want to become a part of the Entrepreneurs+ Community and learn how to make your business competitively fit? Join now.
All the best in the success of your business,
Richard Shrapnel
