Читать книгу Inflection Points - Matt Spielman - Страница 12

Every business that seeks to move into new markets, add team members, open new stores, or expand their horizons in any manner runs into the same challenge: How do you preserve your unique culture as you grow? The founders and the original team members have a strong sense of what their business is and what it stands for. But as more and more new hires come on board, and as you expand to additional locations, perhaps in states or even continents far from home, newer employees may simply see your company as offering not a mission but a job.

You could call it the “last mile” challenge. How do you deliver the same level of care for new customers or clients, when the people who are actually in contact with those customers are new to the company? They may have never even met the founder or have a clear sense of what the company's culture is meant to be. How can they represent your values to the buyer?

This was the dilemma facing a Paris-based fine jewelry company. Its founder and CEO wanted to work on two issues in our coaching sessions. First, the company was poised for expansion throughout Europe and even planning a flagship store in New York. How could they preserve the culture that had made the company so successful? The founder and his wife had been the main drivers of the company's success. How do you keep that same feeling of a family business when your ambitions point toward global expansion?

In addition, the couple wanted to fulfill a long-time dream of theirs: relocate from Paris, where the main shop and most of the employees were located, to Switzerland. How do you make a shift like that without upending everything you've built?

We began by looking for the adjectives that best described what made the company's culture so special. Those carefully chosen adjectives summarized, in a few pithy phrases, the culture of the company. The founder could now evangelize using those terms and explain to new team members just what the company stood for in language they understood. As the firm added new people, the executive leadership team was also using those same key words, over and over, as a way of explaining, “This is who we are. This is what we are working toward. This is how we go about our business to get there. And this is how we play together in the sandbox.”

Before long, the new language became part of the interview process. Even before people were hired, they were exposed to the terminology that explained what made the culture of the company unique. As a result, the jewelry company was able to maintain its culture even as it expanded throughout Europe and beyond.

And as for the move to Switzerland? They no longer had to be afraid of it. As part of my client's Game Plan System, in the visualization step of the ACHIEVE model, he added a photograph of a particular home in Switzerland that he thought would be wonderful for him and his wife. A year later, they both moved into that very home, confident that the business would not suffer. As I always say, the power of visualization is not the sole possession of athletes or even businessmen! After all, seeing is believing—in the professional and personal spheres!