2. Who? Because culture eats strategy for breakafast

Growth Plan Series - Part 2

Before we get to the practical parts there is one more issue to look into.

Setting up, owning and managing a business is not the easiest way to make a leaving, yet you chose it over employment. There must be reasons for it. These are your drivers.

It is easy to forget what these drivers are when you are under the daily pressures of the business but ignoring them for too long will undoubtedly result in frustration and fatigue. Who wants the responsibilities of running a business when it’s not fulfilling anymore?

There are 2 types of drivers to look at:

• Values - things that are dear to you. Compromising on them will lead to frustration and low self-esteem. For example, you care about the environment but using compostable packaging materials will make your products very expensive. You can decide to prefer your values over profit or make a compromise and use nylon. What will make you feel better?

• Motivation - things that get you out of bed in the morning. It can be money, independence, innovation, creativity, making the world a better place, etc. 

It is worth spending some time with yourself and making a list of the most important values and motivations. This will help you make sure you don’t compromise on them. And if you do, be aware of it and of the price you are paying, and make sure that this is a price worth paying.

If you have a team, it is advisable to do this exercise with them too. Ask them what are the values and motivations that are most important to them and list them. Obviously different people will have different values and will be motivated by different things so have a discussion and try to reach a consensus. If this doesn’t work ask each one to assign a weight to each element in the list (value or motivation) from 1 to 5 with a total of no more than 20 for each participant. Sum-up the weights and the top 5-6 values and/or motivations are the ones to look at.

As a final exercise try to create a value statement incorporating these elements. You may have had a shot at this before but chances are that it was intuitive, and perhaps even a bit artificial. 

Creating a value statement using the above methodology ensures it is based on genuine foundations.