Can You See the Big Picture?

Even when we begin to recognize what’s killing our profitability, start to dial in on the right prescription for addressing it, and come up with some simple solutions that can have a strong impact, we’ll miss capturing a significant amount of our best potential results if we allow our team to remain confused around one thing that poses such a high risk! We have to make sure every single individual in our organization understands exactly how they contribute to the company’s mission and vision. Make no mistake though, this isn’t as simple as them knowing where it’s printed (or hanging in a frame), it’s critical that they connect the specific tasks they’re responsible for on a daily basis to achieving the mission and vision!

Before we dig into any statistics proving how important this really is, I’ll challenge you to consider how having that kind of clarity in the work you’re doing impacts your own performance… When it comes down to how even the most mundane tasks tie back to the perfectly crafted missions statement hanging in a fancy frame for all the visitors and clients to marvel at, the tagline vision statement printed on shirts and business cards, or the values we expect our team members to live up to, aren’t you more willing to go the extra mile when you have a clear understanding of why it matters? As Cindy and I discussed this recently, neither of us could point to a single company we had worked for that had ever provided us with anything resembling that kind of clarity! While I’d like to think we still performed well beyond what was expected of us in our respective roles, I can’t help but think that having this kind of crystal clear understanding of how even the crappiest work we did made an impact on anyone else would have brought out even more in us.

Assuming you can relate to that (at least a little bit if you’re being completely honest) in a role where you have leadership responsibility, how much more important is it that we provide that clarity for the individuals who are counting on us to lead them? When we invest the time and energy into being intentional about connecting those dots for our team members, I guarantee you that we’ll soon see the results. This one simple, but not necessarily easy, step can have a direct impact on several of the things that are killing our profitability. We’ll work through engagement more specifically soon but just consider this statement I found in a Harvard Business Review article not so long ago, “organizations with a high level of engagement report 22% higher productivity.”

When we know why the work we’re doing matters, to the company as a whole as well as the people we serve, isn’t it easier to engage? If that’s true for us, it’s just as important to provide that kind of understanding for our teams to earn their engagement - and thereby drive productivity! And that’s exponentially easier when we’re speaking the right language so we’ll address that before moving on to a change that we’ll likely need to make in our approach…