The 4 Cornerstones for Lasting Business Success!

So I think about a company culture, I think about a jigsaw puzzle approach to how that company culture is built. And for me, the first corner of the jigsaw puzzle is what I call the vivid vision that every company needs to have a very clear 4 or 5 page written description about what their company looks like, acts like and feels like in the future after you go from that vivid vision component, when you have that written description, the design elements added to it, and you're sharing it with all of the members of your team, the second corner of the jigsaw puzzle for me is your core purpose. And that's really the one reason why you exist as an organization. So for me, as an organization, as an example, my core purpose that Simon Sin had talked about his start with, my idea is to help entrepreneurs make their dreams happen. So everything in my business is related to that core purpose, right? It's all about my invest in your leaders course, my speaking events, my coaching, my books, the CEO alliance, my second in command podcast. All of my products and services are consistent with my core purpose. The second corner of the jigsaw puzzle for me is the core values. And that's really where you really understand the core values inside your organization. You recruit people based on the core values. You fire people who break the core values. You literally reinforce the core values in all of your meetings, in the day to day operations, you're celebrating people who are living the core values. It's all about the core values in your organization. And for me, core values should be a maximum of four or five core values. They should be short, easy to understand phrases that don't need any explanation whatsoever. And you should be willing to fire people who break the core values. Most organizations aren't willing to fire people who break them. So for me, those don't tend to be core values, they tend to be more like aspirational values. The reason I like short, easy to understand phrases that they don't need any explanation. And every member of the leadership team should be able to recite your core values and live them as should every single employee. And most companies aren't even at that level at all. So this is actually our guest speaker. These are her core values for her organization. Deliver what you promised, get done, treat every member like your best friend, be a tigger, which is actually a core value they got rid of recently because it was confusing. If you didn't understand Winnie the Pooh, live and breathe sport and social club and take pride in all you do. So you can see the five core values that they're left with were very, very easy to understand. They were clear, and they were willing to fire people if they broke those core values. It's an easy test, and it scales inside your organization. And then from there I go into the bhag or your big hairy, audacious goal, and that's really that driving stretch. And those are the kind of four corners, right? The plan to make it all happen, the vivid vision of what you're building and that BHAG that you're really driving towards. My BHAG is replacing vision statements with vivid visions worldwide. So if I think about my organization with my core purpose, my core values, my bhag and my vivid vision of where we're going, that becomes the aligning force inside the organization that completely aligns every single employee, every single customer, so that everyone's really pulling in that same direction. And that's what allows me to make the decisions inside my organization as well, is it allows me to make those decisions because I'm so clear on what I'm actually building. So if I think about all of your businesses today, it's really thinking for yourself, how clear are all of your employees on your vivid vision? How clear are all of your customers on your vivid vision? How clear are every single person who touches your organization with your core values? It's really thinking about all of those specific points, and that's where culture really starts from, is that complete alignment with all four of those points. So when Simon Sinek wrote start with why Simon was actually on our board of advisors five years before he wrote that book, when I was building 1-800-got- junk, Simon flew out to Vancouver to meet Brian and I in 2003 after reading about us in Fortune magazine to see if our culture was truly as strong as we said it was. We'd ranked as number one to work for in British Columbia that year. The next year, we ranked number one to work for again. And then the third year, we ranked number two to work for in all of Canada, it was started because of the alignment with that vision, that complete obsession and alignment so that every single person in the organization, our customers, suppliers, employees, the frontline staff, the call center, all knew where we were going. They could describe the company. In our Slack group, we actually have a vivid vision channel where all of our members are sharing the vivid visions for their companies. And I would encourage you all to. To. To. To. To look at some of the vivid visions of some of your peers as well. And then we also had a speaker recently, Jennifer. Good day. And she and her team at Conscious Copy have written about 350 vivid visions for different companies around the world. So if you need help pulling yours together, she's a good resource for you to turn to as well. The core value side is. Is the real kind of depth inside of. One of the ways that I like to define them is using Jim Collins session. He calls it Mission to Mars. And he thinks about, if he was going to go and start his company on Mars and he could only take 5 of his key employees with him to Mars, who would he bring with him to actually do that? Then how would you describe those five people? And if you were able to describe them, when you describe those people, you end up understanding what your core values for your company are because you're really able to describe those people in that way. That's a good starting point. The second part for me is again, that firing part, right? If you're not willing to fire people if they're breaking the core values, they're more like an aspirational value, and that helps you limit them. The only time I've ever really allowed any of my clients to have a single word as a core value was a company that I'd coached for six years, and their core value was simplifying. And that just made perfect sense as a single word. But anytime I've ever seen anyone have like, passion or integrity, it's too confusing for people to understand that. If it's confusing to understand, they're not going to buy into them. The other part is if you create an acronym around your core values, people start to wonder if it's more important to have the acronym than it is to actually have the core values. Right. They're wondering what's more important. Is it all about the fun little word that you put together or the fun little saying? Or is it really about the core values themselves? So that's why I don't really worry about having them line up with anything like a core, you know, a fancy state sentence. The other part is from a book that I read years ago called Don't Make Me think, which talked about website design and website copy. Anytime you need to have an explanation for something like a dot, dot, dot or example or an IG or a couple of bullet points under something, it means the something wasn't actually clear enough in its first instance. So when you can make everything super clear in its first instance, then you don't actually need to actually have any other explanation in terms of training your employees on core values, then it's okay to give them three or four examples. You know, if you want to give them three or four examples of how we deliver what we promise, that's showing up on time, it's turning our work back into our peers on time, it's setting expectations with clients and overachieving. Those are all examples of how we deliver what we promise. In terms of your company training, it's okay to use examples, but you don't want to have the examples as necessary for people to understand the core values in and of themselves. I also don't like to use any real acronyms if possible, or terminology that's only understandable if you are an employee because then your customers and your suppliers don't really understand how to actually live those core values or make them work as well. So. So that's kind of how I think about the core values component to it. The BHAG is really that long term stretch that you have inside your organization, right? It's supposed to be that aligning long term stretch that everyone's working towards. And according to Jim Collins, who defined the term bhag, that big hairy, audacious goal, it's not supposed to be, you know, a million lives changed or a million whatevers. It's supposed to be something that is more intrinsic versus measurable. So as an example at Microsoft, their BHAG was to put a computer on every desktop and then they later change that to end in every household. Nike's BHAG in the early 70s was to destroy Adidas, right? Boeing's BHAG was to democratize air travel. So it's supposed to be that long term stretch that is something that from the inside, from your employees you could see happening and from the outside world they might think is impossible, but your employees think is actually possible. So that's how those pieces all line together, where you have your vivid vision, the core values, your bhag, and then the last corner is really that core purpose. That's how allowing you and your employees to say no to things, right? If you think about light, when you really, really focus light, it's like a laser. And if you have a laser highly focused, it can light up a room. If you have light that is really dispersed, it actually disperses and it might be able to light up a room, but it's not going to do as much. So the idea with the core purpose is it allows you to say no to certain business opportunities. It allows you to go to mastermind events and find the right opportunities that are aligned with your core purpose, aligned with your vivid vision, because sometimes we end up with a lot of these random opportunities, but we don't necessarily have the right opportunities that are going to drive us. So that's the aligning core points. So for me, culture starts with those four corners of the jigsaw puzzle, right? Your vivid vision, your core purpose, your bhag and your core values, and then everything else emerges from there.