Why You Really Matter

How many times have you had a task on your to-do list that you just didn’t want to mess with? You know, one that was not only a pain in the butt to deal with but also something you didn’t really understand why it even needed to be done? Assuming you’re picturing at least half a dozen examples of your own, I'll be completely transparent in sharing that those have always been the easiest for me to push to the back of my desk and even pile other things on top of! And truth be told, the level of difficulty has little to do with it… I just want the effort I put into anything to matter!

Can you relate? I’m guessing you can, and I’m certain the people on your team can too!

Even when we’re extremely intentional about sharing a message with our team members about how achieving organizational goals benefits them, we can’t stop there… While that’s certainly important, we need to make sure we’re clear about the impact they make beyond the numbers; who are they serving (internally and externally) and why any given task (even the seemingly stupid ones) is important. We need to make sure they know what they’re doing matters!

This doesn’t need to be complex or eloquent. In fact, simple and specific may be our best approach. But it can’t be something we mention once and never circle back to! In Jeff Henderson’s book, Know What You’re FOR, he shares the story of why we never hear someone say “you’re welcome” at Chick-fil-A. He explained how Truett Cathy came up with the idea, and how long it took the founder of the company to embed “My Pleasure!” into the culture.

You’d think all he would have had to do is send out a memo stating the new corporate policy and the rest would be history - and you’d be wrong! And that wasn’t something that only Truett Cathy faced… I don’t know a single business owner, or leader at any level for that matter, who can snap their fingers and get their team members to magically change what they’ve been doing for years.

When we want to build a culture that our team members truly enjoy being part of - and really be sure that working for us doesn’t suck - we need to be very clear on why any task we assign matters, to the individual, to the company, and to the people we serve. We need to keep it incredibly simple and we need to talk about it over and over and over again. And then we need to circle back to why it matters! After all, don’t you want the work you do to matter too?

Moving forward, we’ll look at a few key things we can focus on, even in the toughest jobs, so our team members know they matter, they have clarity on their overall performance, and they actually enjoy being part of the process!