A key driver to profitably scaling your business is having a strong culture where the right people with the right talents believe in your core purpose, your reason for being, and your core values. As you depend upon people to achieve success, you will struggle greatly without the right people at all levels of your company.
Here is what I think…
Profit is a lagging indicator, the result of a big dynamic process in various stages of control. If your people do not understand the fundamentals of business, or are financially illiterate, it will be difficult to build enterprise value.
One of the prime reasons a company exists is to increase enterprise value, achieving ever increasing levels of profit. Earning profit, and keeping the cash resulting from profit is one method to increase enterprise value. Cash is generated through profit, and cash is the fuel for growth.
Learning how to create predictable profits is a skill every CEO needs to master if they want to grow and be financially stable. S/he needs to ensure all employees are top talent and know basic business and financial principles. Teaching those principles is a CEO’s constantly recurring responsibility.
Want more detail? Check out the resources below:
ARTICLE: First Who - Get The Right People on the Bus. Jim Collins. [6 min read]
First, get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off) and then decide where to drive it. This is so critical, because as a CEO you will not be able to create a differentiated strategy which drives profits, or even come close to executing on it, without the right people on your team.
If you begin with 'who' rather than 'what', you can adapt more readily to the everchanging marketplace. If you have the right people on the bus, the problem of motivating and managing people largely goes away. With the wrong people, it doesn't matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won't have a great company. - Jim Collins
VIDEO: 6 Core Competencies for Hiring a Great Team. Jim Collins. [3:29 min]
A quick list of 6 competencies you need to embrace to get the right people on your team.
Find people who share your core values. Create a culture that reinforces those values.
People don't have a job. They have responsibilities. The right people know this.
The right people do what they say they are going to do. They have a very high rate of performance.
The right people don't need to be tightly managed. They need guidance, teaching, but not management.
The right people have tremendous passion for the enterprise and for what it is trying to do.
The right people display a window of mirror maturity, willing to share success, but also be personally responsible for failure.
BOOK: Discovering Your Authentic Core Values. Mark Alan Schelske
Here are some quick tips Schelske discusses. Sequester yourself and find a place where you can reflect on your life, and what is important to you. Bring a journal, and list events over time that have shaped your life, and you into who you are today. In each circumstance, ask yourself W'HY' enough times to get to the primary issue, the driver of the behavior or circumstance. Determine the motivation behind the behavior, and capture it in a word or phrase.
A self-inquiry question to consider:
If a core value is violated, are you willing to fire an offender? Are you willing to take a financial hit if the situation you are facing flies in the face of a core value?
And finally, I'll leave you with a quote:
"It's not hard to make decisions if you know what your values are."
—Roy Disney
