Businesses are born out of a belief that they can make a difference and make people’s lives better. As a leader, now is the time for you to assess if the original problems you wished to solve are still relevant, and how you must change to meet your clients’ needs and solve their issues in a more effective way moving forward.
In his monthly column for Insurance Nerds, Vancouver-based employee engagement and internal brand communications expert Ben Baker shares his insights into how to communicate value effectively, internally, so people want to listen and engage. In the end, it’s about developing leaders that can create influence through trust.
The world has changed AGAIN.
Now is the time to assess how those changes have affected you, your employees, your customers, your vendor partners, and the way that you do business.
This is not necessarily a bad thing.
Change brings opportunity. It creates the ability to re-assess what has worked in the past, what is still working, and what needs to be augmented to succeed moving forward.
The most important thing to realize that your vision for success needs to be yours. It cannot be someone else’s vision of success, or else it has no meaning. Too many companies, and leaders, believe that their success needs to on other people’s terms.
They need to be a Unicorn company because someone else in their space became a Unicorn. They believe that they need to have a specific headcount or number of clients to be successful, but none of that is true.
Companies are successful because the leaders of the company have a clear vision of what is important to them and act accordingly.
Great companies come in all sizes, in all categories, and at all economic levels. The same can be argued for bad companies.
What separates good and great companies from bad companies is clearly defined vision.
They know who they are, where they came from, their strengths, their weaknesses, who their customers are, how they best serve them, and where they are going.
However, It is not enough for the leader alone to understand all of this. It is their job to make sure that every employee not only understands the vision but believes in it and knows what their role is in ensuring success.
Vision is about knowing where you want to go and putting the people, policies, and procedures together to make sure that it happens.
Here are some things to consider:
- What are you doing today to secure your vision for the future?
- What does success mean to you, and why?
- How are you clearly defining that success, and how will you know if you have achieved it?
- What are the factors that are keeping you from achieving your vision?
- What can you do to remove barriers?
- Who are the people you need to align yourself with to cement your success?
- What skill sets do you need that you lack to accomplish your vision?
- What or who is holding you back from achieving your vision?
- Do your customers and employees believe in your vision, and if no, why not?
- What are you doing today to make sure that you have the leadership, policies, procedures, people, and culture in place to achieve your vision?
- How are you communicating that vision in a way that people not only listen to it and understand it but believe in it and want to be part of your success?
Answering those questions is a great place to begin to codify your vision and begin the process of articulating it effectively to those who believe in you and want to see you succeed?
Here is wishing everyone health, safety, and long-term success.
Connect with Ben HERE to discuss how to provide your people with the skills and mindset they need to lead teams effectively into the new normal.
About Ben Baker
Ben Baker has been a Fractional Chief Communications Officer, Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Podcast Officer for his clients for over a decade. "The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” - George Bernard Shaw We help you fix that problem and make sure you are listened to, understood, valued, and engaged with by internal and external clients, prospects and stakeholders in meaningful and profitable ways.
Ben Baker has been a Fractional Chief Communications Officer, Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Podcast Officer for his clients for over a decade.
"The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
- George Bernard Shaw
We help you fix that problem and make sure you are listened to, understood, valued, and engaged with by internal and external clients, prospects and stakeholders in meaningful and profitable ways.
