Strategic Planning And Feedback for Development for 2023

 Recently the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared an “end” to the Covid-19 pandemic. Although that should come as good news for American businesses, newer challenges are starting to take center stage with American consumers, including the big one. 

Are we in a recession yet? 

Other issues ahead include rising mortgage rates, continued supply chain shortages, and prices on consumer goods on everything from gasoline to groceries. 

Although none of this makes for a comfortable forecast for 2023, it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a gloomy outlook for American businesses either. As we previously wrote, many major American companies, including Trader Joe’s, Microsoft, American Airlines, and more were founded in times of economic downturn. 

The only real truth for the year ahead is that preparation and planning will serve as the best foundation for the year to come, no matter how the future shakes out.

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.”

― Alan Lakein, author

If you’re looking to align your future with the present day, here are a few key steps to help you build your strong foundation. 

Review Your Core Values

As the checklist for how you run your company, your core values should be front and center in all business strategy meetings. 

Ideally, every employee should be able to quote your core values by heart. Why? Because if your core values guide you in all that you do, your employees should already be aware of that and actually want to follow suit, as they look to replicate your successes in their own leadership and departments.

What makes great core values? Your core values shouldn’t just sound good on paper, but they should carefully align with your business ideals and practices. 

Great core values are what set your company apart. They are the values that are wholeheartedly believed and experienced by your leadership, your employees, your partners, and your customers. 

If your core values aren’t already a tent pole for your business, now is the time to pull them out, and review them. See how you can reframe your internal communications to get your team on board and align their business outputs with the values you’ve set for the business. 

Take a Good Look at Your Internal Team

Covid-19 certainly made recruiting even more difficult than ever as employees–especially those in middle management positions–redefined their work-life balance. 

During the “great resignation,” as it came to be termed, the media focused extensively on the mass exodus of people leaving positions that were no longer meeting their needs. The media spent less time, however, covering the many employees who went to positions that better fit their values and their needs. 

If your employee recruitment has been frustrating, highlighting your mission, your business culture and your core values can be a beacon to employees looking for a better fit for their skills. 

It is also important that you don’t settle for “good enough” for the executives who aren’t in alignment with your core values. Keep in mind that mishires in senior roles can cost businesses hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of dollars in lost revenue.

So choose right, from the beginning, and use this to determine who’s a match for your corporate culture and who isn’t. 

Focus on Your Growth Opportunities

Now is a great time to focus on your growth opportunities. While you may think growth opportunities means increasing revenue and finding new clients, it is equally important to create a culture that allows your employees to grow. 

Here at PFD Group, we are big believers in the idea that creating a culture and an environment that encourages your employees to thrive, should be a central part of your growth strategy. 

As a leader, I can confidently say that there is nothing more rewarding than seeing your employees thrive and grow in their roles. 

–Ethan Martin, CEO, PFD Group

Solicit Feedback

Ostensibly you’ve built your business to serve your clients and to serve your employees. But are you asking them if it does exactly that? 

In a prime tech example, by 2008 users had already started celebrating the annual “Delete Your MySpace Account Day.” The social network was rapidly losing market share to upstart Facebook, which had a better user experience, according to people actively engaged in that experience. 

It took MySpace another 12 years before it was finally acquired by that same upstart. 

If you were listening to MySpace leadership, big plans were in the works that were sure to bring users back. But if you asked your team and your clients, you already knew that Facebook was the place to find clients–nearly a decade before MySpace closed for good.

Internal and external feedback is a critical tool to help you drive growth, customer service and product development. 

At PFD Group, we have developed a facilitated process that carefully solicits feedback from your most engaged clients and customers. 

Week One: Confidential Interviews With Your Leadership Team

During the first week, work with your leadership team to determine what’s at stake, Discuss how you’d like to drive change–if necessary–from what you learn from clients and employees. What are your key growth indicators and how can you align growth with what is on board? 

Week Two: Distribute the Survey

Have your survey ready to go on day one. And remember that each survey should be dedicated to a specific area or topic. Don’t make it too broad or too long. You should be constantly talking with your core customers so written and verbal feedback should always be a part of your outreach. 

In advance of sending each survey, have a full plan in place on how you will outreach to and remind clients that their answers will help drive change. Let stakeholders know time is limited so they don’t put off answering the survey. Also clearly indicate if you’ll be offering an incentive for completing the survey and especially let your customers know WHY this survey is important. 

Week Three: Compile and Share Survey Feedback

Conduct an preliminary review of the survey results to develop questions and topics of discussion that will guide your strategic planning. 

You’ll want to plan a half day or full day, offsite, facilitated strategic planning session to review your strategic planning. Facilitating the meeting will allow your senior team to be fully present during the discussion period, and avoid distraction such as meeting logistics, or who is in charge of ordering lunch. One you’ve discussed and compiled the survey, come up with a plan on how to act on the internal and external feedback you’ve compiled. 

And don’t forget to thank the stakeholders who participated in the survey. 

If you’d like help with your strategic planning for 2023, PFD Group can help. Contact us today to learn how we can help with strategic planning, consumer feedback and employee retention and outreach.

The Story Behind Our Company Name

“It is not the risk I enjoy, and I don’t like the feeling of adrenaline, resulting from perceived danger. Rather, what drives me is my desire to accomplish noble missions while helping my team coolly and mindfully face the hazards and control the risk with operating precision.” 

–Jim Wetherbee, test pilot and astronaut. He is the only person to command five Space Shuttle missions. 

Every day tens of thousands of flights ferry passengers from one place to another. A quick look at the FlightRadar24 live air traffic map will show American skies blanketed with aircraft at any given moment. 

These aircraft deliver more than 100 million passengers to some 200 commercial, and domestic airports, and countless more private airports annually. So important are these aircraft and the passengers they carry, that the greeter aviation industry supports nearly 5 percent of the entire American Gross Domestic Product. 

It’s an awesome responsibility for flight crew and air traffic control alike, to ensure these aircraft and their passengers reach their destinations safely and on schedule. 

Fortunately, thanks to modern technology, pilots and air traffic control are supported by the Primary Flight Device (PFD), which the Federal Aviation Administration defines as:

“A single physical unit that always provides the primary display of all the following: altitude, airspeed, aircraft heading and attitude located directly in front of the pilot.”

Guiding Clients As We Would Aircraft

Clearly, the entire team at PFD Group are avid fans of aviation and travel. So much so that we named our business after these in-flight displays. 

PFD Group CEO Ethan Martin is even a certified flight instructor. He has spent so much time in the skies that he takes the lessons he has learned from the in-aircraft PFD and applies them to the leadership coaching his team at PFD Group provide

“The PFD is a critical instrument for awareness. We provide similar awareness education for entrepreneurs and CEOs who want to better define where they are, where they are going, and where they are tracking on that course.” 

–Ehtan Martin, CEO, PFD Group 

Not A Personal Floatation Device

Yes, we get asked if PFD Group stands for personal flotation device. A lot. 

And no, that isn’t what we do. We provide so much more education than just how to keep your company afloat in times of emergency. 

What We Do

Just like the primary flight display, we guide you and display the key information you need to help you make informed decisions to get you where you want to go. 

In brief, we 

• Utilize our proven 3HAG processes, to help you gain confidence and clarity in your growth strategy. 

• Help you build an incredible team of leaders that support your vision, so you can spend more time on the important tasks that will make your business thrive. 

• Work with you to create strategies that will help you scale effectively, so you and your leadership team feel equipped to confidently execute your differentiated strategy. 

• Provide coaching, strategic planning, and entrepreneurship guidance to companies realizing $5M to $500M in revenue each year. 

“After one year of working with PFD Group, we reached and exceeded goals that we didn’t think were possible at the beginning of the year.”

— Cory Prellwitz, Co-owner of Hometrends LLC

Our Process

• First we talk–about your goals, your business needs, and your core values.

• Then we determine if we are a good fit for your growth needs.

• Next, we build a Thrive Plan in which we determine the strengths of your leadership team and create strategies to emphasize those strengths.

• Ultimately, we help you move the needle and continuously evolve as an organization. 

• Among our many tools, we help you 

  • Pinpoint opportunities for growth

  • Become a better and more efficient leader 

  • Balance your life, so your personal life does not take a back seat to your professional life

Why We Do What We do

When you build a thriving business and life, you have the chance to transform the lives of your employees and of the people in your community. In doing so, you can also create more time for yourself, so you can spend time on what matters in your life most. 

Or in airline speak, we help you determine when to take off, increase elevation, maintain cruising speed, look for blind spots, or land. And then just like the PFD for which we were named, we help guide you to realize your goals. 

Is Your Corporate Culture Lacking Employee Engagement?

If you think employee engagement is on the decline, you aren’t alone. 

A recent Gallup survey found that employee engagement has hit a new low. Just one in three U.S. employees report feeling “actively engaged” at work, according to the survey, while nearly one in seven (14%) report feeling actively “disengaged.” (2022, Gallup.com)

Gallup says it collects this data by asking random samples of the working population about “organizational outcomes, including profitability, productivity, customer service, retention, safety and overall well-being.” 

Managers Are Most Disengaged

An interesting and important side note to this survey is that managers are among the employees who report feeling the most disengaged at work, with manager engagement declining by seven points since the last survey. In particular, managers report sharp decreases in the subsets “believing they have clear expectations” and “feeling someone encourages their development.”

This decline in manager engagement leads to an obvious assumption. If so many managers are feeling disengaged, is it any wonder that employees are also mentally checking out? 

What to do? Gallup recommends going “back to the basics'' by establishing clear employee communications. 

Improving Engagement 

We know remote work has opened up new opportunities for many businesses, and not every corporate culture loans itself to a full-time, in-office environment. But if you do have an in-office set up, we recommend you make it an energizing one that is designed to engage and motivate employees. 

In-Person Meetings

We also believe in the power of in-person meetings. Leadership teams who get together to strategize, socialize and communicate in person on a regular basis are the ones with the strongest employee engagement. 

“In-person meetings provide a sense of intimacy, connection and empathy that is difficult to replicate via video. It’s much easier to ask for attentive listening and presence, which creates the psychological safety that people need to sense in order to engage and participate fully.” 

–Paul Axtell, corporate trainer and author of the book Meetings Matter

Consider how in-person gatherings work in your personal life. 

Have you ever heard anyone make the case that Zoom is an excellent replacement for Sunday dinner, backyard barbecues, weddings and the after-school play? Of course not.

The same is true for work gatherings. 

The side discussions alone are invaluable. They help build trust and allow the team to fully get to know one another. They also often lead to idea sharing that helps foster business growth and success.

Importantly, eight in ten employees say they want in-person meetings. 

We know that in-person meetings are not always possible on a frequent i.e. weekly, basis especially for companies that are fully virtual. Whether you are an in-person business, fully virtual or hybrid operation, it is critical to bring together leadership in strategic, in-person quarterly and annual planning meetings. These meetings should be held in a private, dedicated space that minimizes the risk of interruptions and allows the entire leadership team to fully engage in the strategy of growing and improving your business. 

Good for the Economy 

In the Business Value of Meeting Face to Face, the U.S. Travel Association reports that employees believe in-person meetings help them advance their professional growth, reinvigorate their engagement and productivity and foster better stronger leadership skills

In-person meetings are also good for the economy. The in person gathering can require everything from local catering to air travel and overnight stays. Across the U.S. in-person meetings support 800,000 American jobs and generate nearly $50 billion in local, state and federal taxes. 

Set a Regular Meeting Cadence

If you do bring your executive team together, amplify the results by planning regular meetings–at least quarterly–and set specific agendas and goals for each meeting. 

Nothing kills the positive effects of a great meeting than the loss of steam as “real world”  deadlines and expectations start to take precedence. Knowing that a follow up in-person meeting is already on the books will help keep everyone on track, as they consider how their day-to-day actions will affect the bigger picture. 

Demonstrate the importance of these quarterly leadership gatherings by scheduling them at least a year in advance. 

By giving your team plenty of time to schedule their own life events around the high-level meeting schedule, you let your employees know that you value their time which in turn will improve attendance and participation rates. 

Getting into a regular rhythm may take some work as you get everyone on board, but ultimately, your team will be grateful for the ability to plan around the schedule. 

If you’d like more information on building successful in-person leadership meetings, contact us today. 

Related Content

Meeting in person is great for personal leadership growth as well. Read more about the awesome benefits of coming together at our PFD Group Alaska Summit here.

What Do You Want Your Legacy to Be?

Too often, I come across individuals who seemingly have it “all.” On the surface, they’ve built amazing businesses which serve as models for other executives. What is less obvious, however, is how much some leaders have completely ignored every other aspect of their life in their pursuit of business excellence. 

Is this the legacy you want to build for yourself? 

When developing your vision for the future, you should consider all aspects of your life. Although there are numerous tools that can help you define these categories, one such tool is the Wheel of Life, which breaks life into eight overarching areas: health, career, personal development, finances, life enjoyment, societal contribution, relationships and romance.

What Do I Want to Be Remembered For?

Getting these eight areas in alignment starts with asking yourself the tough but inevitable question, “what do I want to be remembered for?”

When building the framework around your legacy, a good wayfinding exercise is to consider what you’d like your obituary to read. 

In 2019, this piece of advice was exemplified after the passing of my good friend Morgan Nields. His obituary read that he “was a friend to thousands.” His funeral, probably the largest I’ve ever attended, was filled with the same outpouring of love that was personified in his obituary. 

Morgan was an entrepreneur, and a visionary in medical imaging, and he was also always happy to lend a hand to other entrepreneurs like me. 

During his memorial ceremony, I also learned that Morgan had a specific goal for his life. He wanted to make a positive contribution to everyone he interacted with. 

His purpose struck a chord with me and it also continues to guide the work I do with other business leaders here at PFD Group. 

Time, Talent & Treasure

When crafting the vision around your legacy, it also helps to consider that you really only have three pillars that are yours to give. 

Your time, your talent and your treasure 

The expression originates in Matthew 6:21 but it has also become an underpinning for much of today’s philanthropic giving. 

How you choose to share your three pillars with others is completely defined by you. Yours could be a bold vision with your family name gracing medical buildings and scholarship programs. Or it could be a quieter legacy, like Morgan's, whose purpose was tied directly to the people he personally knew and interacted with.

While Morgan left a quieter legacy, it is no less important to the people he touched. 

I’m Too Busy to Define My Vision

If you're thinking, “I’m just too busy to define my vision right now. Maybe next month,” that’s not uncommon. We often hear this sentiment from our newer clients. 

Executives often start with an amazing idea for their business. They pour all–or at least most–of their attention into growing this idea. When the business enters the stage known as “successful,” they might take a moment or two to celebrate. 

But as the business grows, there’s always more to do. Maybe you just don't know when or how to stop “wearing all the hats.” Or maybe your life is not in balance as your business continues to take more than its fair share of your attention. 

A laser-sharp focus on business is never healthy when it comes at the expense of the other aspects of your life. And the demands of your business are only going to get greater, not less, as the business succeeds. 

That’s why it is important to have a vision for yourself that guides you so you can be successful in all areas of your life. 

If you are now at the point in your business development where you can’t even imagine taking the time for yourself, we can help.  We specialize in helping CEOs thrive in their business AND in their personal lives. 

To start, take a look at our Legacy Vision Tool, which can help you codify what you want your future to look like 

If you’d like more information, please contact us today for a one-on-one introductory session. 

What Are Great Core Values?

One of the first questions clients of PFD Group ask us is what are great core values? 

It’s a question that’s difficult to answer because core values are only as great as a company’s ability to fully live and deploy them. 

Making the definition of “great” even more complicated is that each company is or should be wholly unique from any other business. So should their core values. Even two companies who share the exact same stated values should have very different approaches to why those values are the guiding ones and how each business uses those values to guide their daily decisions. 

The more unique your company is, the more your core values will define that uniqueness and the better culture you’ll have. 

Getting Started in Defining Your Values

If you’re in the early phases of building your business, selecting your core values can be the most important task at hand. Your values will define your company, define how you do business, guide how you select and manage your employees, and even define how your customers will do business with you. 

Most importantly, your core values are exactly that: core. They should not change to match current trends or shifts in consumer sentiment. These are the values you set in place that will guide you year after year, no matter what.

If your core values are already in place, only extenuating circumstances should drive their change. While the below examples may help you relook at how you share your values with your employees and customers, they below should not serve as inspiration for change. 

If you’re new to building core values, the below should serve only as inspiration, and not, obviously, text to be copied. Build your own core values to reflect your unique business and your own personal values. 

50+ Core Values 

To get you started, an infographic published by Visual Capitalist in tandem with research from Valuegraphics showcases the top 56 global values with a breakdown of importance by region. The top five globally are family, relationships, financial security, belonging and community. 

Another list of  possible core values and an excellent breakdown of how often each is used can be found in a study published by MIT Management Review, When It Comes to Culture, Does Your Company Walk the Talk?

The survey lists 62 values that are used by at least 1% of companies that have publicly defined their formal values statements. 

A Word About Integrity

On the MIT chart, “integrity” clearly and significantly outpaces all other values with 65 percent of the 562 businesses audited listing “integrity” as a core value. 

Notwithstanding that Enron and Wells Fargo, both deemed some of America’s worst “bad corporate actors” list integrity among their core values, integrity has grown to be a term that is so loosely defined that it has become nearly a cliche. 

If you choose to follow the crowd and adopt integrity as a core value, be sure to fully define exactly what that means for your business. Also note that none of PFD Group examples below list integrity as a guiding principle, despite the fact that they are all well-known, respected businesses.

What Makes a Great Core Value?

So back to the original question. What makes a great core value? 

The best core values are the ones that shine through in all you do and the ones that set your company apart. They are the values that are wholeheartedly believed and experienced by your leadership, your employees, your partners and your customers. 

For core values to make a difference, you need to talk about them all the time. You have to live by them all the time. You need to hire, fire, discipline, and promote by them.

–Scott Rritzheimer, Scale Architects 

Business Core Values

Here are just a few companies who are actively achieving their defined core values. 

Airbnb Core Values

Airbnb: Champion the Mission

Champion the Mission: We’re united with our community to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere.

1. Champion the Mission

2. Be a Host

3. Embrace the Adventure

4. Be a Cereal Entrepreneur

Etsy Core Values

Etsy: Keep Commerce Human

Etsy guiding principles include:

1. We commit to our craft.

2. We minimize waste.

3. We embrace differences.

4. We dig deeper.

5. We lead with optimism

G Adventures

G Adventures Core Values

The core values of G Adventures are Love, Lead, Embrace, Create, Do.

• We LOVE Changing People’s Lives

• LEAD with Service

• EMBRACE the Bizarre 

• CREATE Happiness & Community

• DO the Right Thing

CB Insights

About CB Insights

Help us solve the biggest challenges in tech. Hungry. Humble. Helpful. Hard-working. High standards. We’ve built our company with these values—and we’re growing faster than ever.

Motley Fool

About Motley Fool

At The Motley Fool, our highest priority is to foster inclusion and belonging so all employees can thrive both personally and professionally. We believe diverse teams perform better. From our board of directors to our recruiting pipeline, we strive for diversity, both inherent and acquired.

• Motley: Foster inclusion and belonging.

• Collaborative: Do great things together.

• Innovative: Search for a better solution. Then top it.

• Fun: Revel in your work.

• Honest: Make us proud.

• Competitive: Play hard, play fair, play to win.

Red Carnation Hotels

10 Reasons Why We Love Working for Red Carnation Hotels

“If you have happy employees, you  have happy guests,” Beatrice Tollman, President & Founder. Like every loving family, we run on true family values: trust, respect and caring for each other. This, we believe, is why we all give our very best in everything we do – and why we are known as one of the world’s top hotel companies, achieving countless accolades such as the renowned Forbes five-star ratings and being voted as either the top hotel, or in the top three, on TripAdvisor in every single location.

Vans

About Vans: Our Brand

To us, “Off The Wall” is a state of mind. It means thinking differently and embracing creative self-expression. It’s choosing your own line on your board and in your life. Vans has over 50 years of connecting to youth culture and we continue to advocate for action sports while recognizing the global “Off The Wall” connection between our brand and art, music, and street culture enthusiasts.

• We are DETERMINED — we have the Van Doren spirit. We’re scrappy and resourceful. We use ingenuity to tackle every challenge head on and find a path forward, even if it’s not a straight line.

• We are CONNECTED — culturally, digitally, socially. We build lasting and meaningful relationships with our consumers, customers, partners and family, wherever they might be.

• We are INCLUSIVE — We invite unique perspectives and value different experiences. We want to hear each other’s point of view.

• We are vibrant and EXPRESSIVE in how we speak, interact and get our jobs done.

• We have FUN working at Vans because we work hard and play hard in our pursuit of enabling creative expression.

If you need help creating your core values or ensuring your corporate culture is actively adopting and performing against those values, the PFD Group can help. Contact us today to set up an exploratory call.

The Importance of the Mentor/Mentee Relationship: A Two Way Street

Guiding Your Mentees

Mentorship wears many faces. And it means different things to different executives. Many of us were lucky enough to have mentors at key turning points in our lives. While each mentee/mentor relationship is unique to the individuals, if done right, mentoring can have an immensely positive impact for everyone involved.

While mentorship does take time, working with mentees can be good for business as well as personal development. 

The Benefits of Mentorship 

Even without a direct tangible result, mentorship can provide a strong foundation for your business. 

Not only does it help shape future leaders, it helps create a qualified pipeline of A Players who are ready to move up and move into roles vacated due to retirement or other external shifting of positions.

Mentorship also drives happier workers, who have been found to be more productive, more satisfied with their careers and more likely to stay in their current business, according to research. Nearly nine in ten (88%) of mentees agree that their productivity or effectiveness has increased due to their current mentoring experience.

Mentors, too, can benefit from the relationship. 

Mentors have reported benefits from the two-way relationship, including developing better leader skills, knowledge sharing, and developing an additional sense of purpose and responsibility. In the classic example of “do what I say, not what I do,” mentoring is yet another way for leaders to re-define the purpose of their business and reconnect with their own purpose.

Research has also shown that while people with mentors get promoted faster than their colleagues, people who serve as mentors also are more likely to get promoted–six times more likely according to a survey by Sun Microsystems. Which means not only should CEOs be mentoring their staff, they should encourage their senior-level staff members to do the same. 

As leaders run the risk of getting caught up in the day to day mechanics of managing their business, mentoring can help them define ideal leadership qualities which can re-emphasize those qualities for themselves. 

Giving Thanks

It goes without saying that when mentees look back at the people who helped shape their careers and their personal growth, they should incorporate gratitude into their reflection. 

But gratitude is a two-way street and not a task limited just to mentees. Mentors who find they’ve received as much from the relationship as their mentees can continue to lead by example by sharing their own words of gratitude. 

If you'd like to learn more about developing your internal mentorship program, The PFD Group can help. We would love to talk with you about your vision for your company and how mentoring aligns with that vision.

Build a Daily Routine

In a highly engaging post at project management site Podio.com, an interactive data visualization broke down an hour-by-hour accounting of the daily habits of 26 of the world’s most creative people. Included in the visualization were such notable creatives as Benjamin Franklin, Victor Hugo, Maya Angelou, Richard Stauss, Pablo Picasso and many others.

What’s immediately noticeable in the colorful chart is that most of the people featured get regular and copious amounts of sleep. 

The creatives featured on the visualization are also alike in that they allocate substantial chunks of time for creative work and for food and leisure. On the other hand, only about half of the entrants specifically allocate time for administrative work/day job in their daily routine. Franz Kafka reported the largest chunk of time, allocating about six hours for administrative tasks and/or his daily jobs. 

Structure is Not the Enemy of Creativity

What’s less immediately obvious in this visualization but equally important is that these notable creatives have reported keeping strict daily routines. The data for the visualization was collected from the 2013 book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey, which highlights the routines of more than 150 creative people. 

The book also includes lots of motivational nuggets, including. 

“Anthony Trollope demanded of himself that each morning he write three thousand words (250 words every fifteen minutes for three hours.)” 

What’s notable from both the visualization and the book is that structure and routine are clearly not the enemy of creativity. Instead the book suggests that building a regular routine may very well be a key contributor to the creative process. 

Maximizing Your Day

In 2020, we wrote a blog post about a similar topic, the importance of creating space and routine every morning. For entrepreneurs, the daily tasks you set for yourself will help you reach your  1-Year Highly Achievable Goals (1HAGs)  and help you make progress on their Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) as you scale your business. 

In other words, building a daily route is integral to the process of goal setting. 

As we noted in that post, another resource for planning a successful morning routine is the book Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs by Cameron Herold and Hal Elrod. The authors recommend a six-step process in implementing a successful morning routine. The process, captured in the acronym S.A.V.E.R.S.,, is Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading and Scribing (Writing). 

Visualizing Your Daily Routine

You may know at PFD Group we are big proponents of creating vision boards to keep you motivated and focused. Creating a visual morning routine planner is also a great way to keep you motivated.. 

As usual, Pinterest has a wealth of ideas on how to create a personalized daily routine, but the website Mashaplans has a beautiful example to get you started. 

If you keep a bullet journal, you may also want to track your daily routine alongside the most important tasks you’re looking at for the coming day to help you emphasize structure in your day. 

Encourage Your Employees to Build a Routine

Now that more people are returning to an office environment, their daily routines are also changing. No more rolling out of bed three minutes before the morning Zoom call. 

It’s important you acknowledge these changes–and that they might not always be easy to adopt–but also to encourage your employees to keep their best habits and to find new, better ones. 

A Life of Service

Just as we saw in the habits of creative people visualized above, it’s important that  your daily routine is a well-rounded one. In many of the examples, you’ll see people visualizing brushing their teeth or making their bed. 

These are clearly important elements to a daily routine, as taking care of yourself is always a priority. But if you and/or your employees are pursuing larger life goals, your daily routine should expand to incorporate those goals. 

For example, if one of your personal or professional Core Values is giving back, you may want to put that core value into action by including an element in your daily habits. 

Unplug and Unwind

Often we hear people tell us they just don't have the time to spend on daily check-ins. But as we’ve already said, think of the daily check in as a way of investing in yourself. 

One daily habit to consider adding to your routine is taking time off to unplug at night. Unwind, uplug, turn off the social media. Science has pretty much proven you’ll get more sleep, feel more rested and be more creative if you do. 

Plus the time you save might just be the time you’ve been looking for to invest in yourself. 

As you start to visualize your daily routine, know that we at PFD Group can help you connect the dots between daily routine, and your Big, Hairy Audacious Goal. If you’d like more information, please contact us today for a one-on-one introductory session.

Building a Mission-Driven Business

In a speech by previous United States Forest Service chief Tony Tooke, Tooke noted that the challenges facing the Forest Service include “lack of capacity to keep our forests healthy and resilient. Caring for forests takes work.” Tooke also said “We have to actively manage forests to restore them to health and resilience.”

This speech is the perfect analogy for building a mission-driven business. A mission-driven company takes consistent work to keep it healthy and resilient. 

Why Build a Mission-Driven Business? 

Although operating a mission-driven business may feel like a commitment to an idealistic “sentiment,” mission-driven companies have been proven to drive more business. According to a Gallup study, “a strong mission promotes brand differentiation, consumer passion, and brand engagement.” 

The same study also found that only about four in 10 (41%) employees know what their company stands for. Which is unfortunate, since a strong mission can also serve as a beacon for attracting and retaining top, engaged employees. 

Even before the global pandemic led to the onset of the “great resignation,” employees had already started verbalizing an increased interest in working for a better corporate culture. A 2018 LinkedIn survey found that 71% of employees said they would take a pay cut to work for a company that has a mission they believe in. 

What’s Your Why?

Building a mission-driven company starts with defining your personal why.

"Purpose-driven businesses are founded out of the desire to make a change -- for the consumer, an industry, or even the world." 

–Bansi Lakhani, founder and chairman, Healing Hands, Via Inc. Magazine

Defining your personal why goes hand in hand with understanding the challenges that face your community and building solutions to meet those challenges. 

While it may seem easy to define a problem and to build solutions to solve that problem, you may also wish to consider if your problem is a real one. Or are you merely building solutions you believe will do well and/or net a lot of sales? 

Richard Banson says finding your passion boils down to asking yourself two important questions: “what do I love” and “what do I dislike?” The first can help you build a business you love and the second can help build solutions to real problems. 

To build your why, you must have a personal investment in the problems you are looking to solve. If you don’t feel motivated by your mission, you will struggle to maintain your commitment to that mission. What’s more, you will have a hard time keeping employees engaged in the mission.

Once you have your “why” in place, ensure it is as visible as possible, both for your employees and for your potential customers and partners. Seeing the “why” every day can ensure employees are aware of and remain aligned with the mission. 

Build a Peer Community

When it comes to implementing your why, another forest analogy comes to mind–that of missing “the forest for the trees.”  

Sometimes when you get caught up in focusing on the day-to-day details (the trees), you may forget about the greater “why” that guides you. In other words, you’ll miss the beautiful forest that surrounds you because you’re so busy focusing on just one tree at a time. 

“We all have blind spots – those areas for improvement and growth. 

–Rhonda Louise Robbins

Having a business support network or peer group can help overcome your blind spots. 

For example, your peer group can help you ensure your values are aligned with your why. If your mission is to create a more sustainable world, for example, but you drive a gas-guzzling vehicle or drink from single-use beverage cups, your actions will outweigh the “why” that guides your greater vision. A peer group can help keep you on track.

Find a Business Coach Who is Passionate About Helping Your Find Your Why

At a certain point, the blind spots between your why and the mechanics of building and growing your business may go beyond the capabilities of your peer network. 

When your business starts to grow rapidly, it can be easy to lose sight of the reasons–the why–that you started the business to begin with. 

This is where having a dedicated, laser-focused business coach can help you find your blind spots. Successful business coaches have worked with numerous CEOs across many industries, which gives them the clarity to see recurring patterns and possible trouble spots as you creatively produce solutions. Because they aren’t involved in your day-to-day operations, they have a clearer vision of where the blind spots may be. 

If you’re looking to build a healthier, more resilient forest, we would love to talk with you about your why and vision for your company. For more information on business coaching, please contact us so we can talk with you about your mission and vision. 

Convert Plans Into Action

As we head into the second half of 2022, a lot of us are asking “What’s next?” 

The past six months have unfolded in a chaotic manner, capping off what has already been an intensely turbulent couple of years. 

We know that these uncertain times have left many CEOs reassessing their plans and goals. Future planning, especially when dealing with an uncertain labor market and mixed signals about economic prosperity, can cause any CEO to ask, “are my goals still realistic?”

Times of uncertainty are a great time to reassess your goals, as long as reassessment doesn’t derail your forward progress. Times of economic prosperity are not necessarily an indicator of business success. As we mentioned in a previous blog post, there are many businesses that have done exceptionally well during times of economic downturn. 

As always, creating and meeting your business goals starts with a solid plan. But planning isn’t enough. Your plan needs action steps to spur forward progress. 

In this post, we revisited one of our earliest PFD blog posts, 

How to Convert Plans Into Action and Impact which we posted more than 10 years ago. Today, we are updating and emphasizing those points and we encourage you to follow along as you look forward to the next six months. 

1. Keep your 2022 (and 2023) plan fresh and relevant.

   Have a one-page version printed where you and your team can see it on a daily basis. Use your plan to frame the agenda for your weekly leadership team meetings.

2. Review your assumptions.

   Does today’s market validate your assumptions? Where do you need to apply more resources? Where do you need to refine your approach?

3. Track the metrics that support your plan.

   Share the scorecard with your team and ensure that everyone is held accountable. There are numerous digital tools that can help you build and measure your success metrics. 

4. Use virtual tools to help you create action plans.

   There are plenty of free tools to help you organize your projects and share them with your team and clients. The free Google Docs has for project template planners (Insert > Table > Table Template), including a product roadmap, review tracker, project assets and content planner. But more professional tools include Smartsheets, ClickUp, Teamwork and Monday. You can log onto these platforms from any browser, easily collaborate on projects and the software automatically emails users updates made on their projects.

5. Bring your leadership team on board for your future planning sessions.

   Are your Mission Statement, Vision Statement and Core Values highly visible? Make sure they are easy to find on your website and on all your internal planning documents so you and your employees can measure success against your most important metrics.

6. Celebrate your wins.

   Recognize key players and acknowledge personal and company successes. Also check to assess what worked and why? 

7. Repeat and review.

   Make regular check-ins and reviews a part of your action plan. Set a regular cadence, but at least quarterly, to make sure your short-term goals continue to align with your larger three-year plan.

If you’d like to learn more about building a robust action plan, Group would love to support you. Please reach out to us to schedule a call.

Is 2022 the Time to Grow Your Business?

If there’s one thing that’s been true about doing business this year, it’s that 2022 has been a time of great uncertainty. That uncertainty may make you cautious in doing business, especially if you're considering growing your company. What’s more, talk of a possible recession on the horizon may also have dampened your enthusiasm over any potential growth plans. 

But don’t let the economy be the sole issue that influences any growth plans you may have. Plenty of major corporations were started during times of economic downturn, including American Airlines Group (Great Depression), Kaiser Permanente (Recession of 1945) Trader Joe’s (Recession of 1958), Microsoft (Recession of 1973-1975), and Groupon (Great Recession, 2007-2009) 

Whether or not an economic downturn actually comes to pass is a question best left to economists and futurists. In the meantime, if your customers are ready for–or even demanding–you provide more of your product or service, 2022 may just be the perfect time to initiate your growth plan. 

Involving Your Team in Your Growth Plans

Growth, however, shouldn’t also be left just to customer opinion. It should be something that is carefully and strategically introduced and managed in tandem with a team of A Players that can help take you to the next level. 

Advising your team of any growth plans can help you build energetic brand ambassadors who will help drive your vision. Involving your team is also one of the best ways to retain your A Players during turbulent times. 

We see our share of CEOs who have big plans to mentor their junior rockstars into the next level. Except they forget to communicate those plans. Which leaves the employee uncertain about their future with the company.

When an employee sees a goal they can help forward or they see a job they feel they are a fit for, it can help them to know that they are on the right track, and they are indeed a good fit to grow alongside your business. 

Not having that feedback could make your A players more amenable to switching positions if they are approached by competing businesses. And any loss of an A PLayer could dramatically affect the success of your growth. 

Letting your people know that they have opportunities to grow alongside your company can be a great motivator, but you also need to match your words to your actions. You definitely don’t dangle a position that will never be a match as a temptation to keep employees in place. 

When building a vision for the future of your company, your A Players can serve as strategic advisors, providing advice and tools to help implement that growth. Remember your employees helped get you where you are today. Be sure to let them help you get to the next level.