Whether you're doing business yourself or whether or not you're a multinational corporation, my view is that it is always wise to think about what your business will be doing in about one, three, or five years' time. You're somewhere right now, and you're heading somewhere—that is always where it starts. Anything in between may occur: things may fail, or the business may grow bigger than you have ever thought possible. If you want to keep it in some way in your control, you need to realize that if there are only yourself in the business today, in one year, three, or five, there may be several more. And as I always say: one man is one problem to be solved; one hundred men are one hundred problems to be solved.
If you would like everyone to head in the same direction, not only must you know where you're going, but everyone else in the company must know that too—from the custodian to the CEO. Unless it's absolutely clear and you take the time to do it, it will be extremely expensive down the road to attempt to justify everyone's perception on the same page. That is why it is a good idea to clarify and put into writing your company's MISSION up front: what you do, how you do it, and where you're going. If there's new talent that is brought into the company, they must hear that from you—or else you might be going in one direction while they're going off in another, and that will not be good for your company.
The mission must be defined and decided—how do you contribute to this world. You don't have to have any idea where to start, bring in someone who will work with this along with your team, or take note of my company https://roatangreenhill.com/greenhill, where we have defined, in writing, our mission, our vision, and our core values.
The way things are supposed to be is the vision. When you bring in a new person into the company, he or she should be able to picture what mission he or she is part of and feel it. And if somebody tells he or she sees or feels it otherwise, then you should consider whether or not you need somebody in your company who essentially thinks differently.
It is up to you to decide. We must also define the company's vision--flexible if need be in the long run, but hopefully defined enough so that every individual who comes in will have some idea of what shared vision we're all after, in what direction we're headed, and what it's supposed to be. This by itself ensures that whether you have two, twenty, or two hundred individuals in your company, everybody has some idea of what matters, what the core is, and in what direction the company is heading. That gets everybody rowing in the same direction. For me, this is crucial in the area of work efficiency and corporate culture.
If I am to enter an organisation where it is defined and spoken of on a regular basis, I am able to approach anybody—cleaner, receptionist, employee, or Chief Executive—and expect more or less the same reaction. These things help to define, build, and perpetuate some sort of company environment—what is sometimes termed company culture.
You should reinforce, anchor, and keep these ideas fixed in place by discussing them regularly in company meetings, management meetings, and functions, and reminding everyone always what is at the core and where the company is headed. Without knowing where it is headed, the company tends to reflect that. Try to visualize growing from the garage operation to the point of employing 50 people, all of whom are employed by the company but going in varied directions. What is it like? What happens? Where is the energy directed? One goes one way, one goes the other way, the third has something else in mind entirely.
If those two basic pillars do exist and are established, the next one that supports and formulates subtleties and potential differences are evidently established core values, as in the example of https://roatangreenhill.com/greenhill.
This is why I recommend implementing these early on—it is less expensive and less time-consuming if there is one, two, three, or five of you. And so the rest who join later enter into an established and defined environment. Either everybody's on the same wavelength, or off you all go—which is better for you, actually, since you keep going in the right direction.
Do you picture how hard it is to do these things in the context of a company with 50 employees, and everybody's doing their own thing, and all of the sudden you need to get all those to move the ship in the same direction? I have done this with one company in which I was doing crisis management, and in all honesty, it was extremely costly and time-consuming to make people adopt it. And all that effort and you still lose staff because the company has picked up along the way employees who share different thinking and do not want to change.
Had it been established from the beginning, such persons wouldn't have joined in the first place.
Well, let's assume that in order to sort things out, 30 percent of the company departs. That is correction—expansion after contraction. If you have these systems and people accept and stick to them, you are able to ride even big company growth without bursting—and that is a big plus in my view.
So, in your companies, has anyone else experienced anything like that? I hope that this has been informative to some of you, and if so, I am happy.
With appreciation Jakub Karásek, MBA and LL.M.