Scaling your Company by Investing in your People

As a leader, I can confidently say that there is nothing more rewarding than seeing your employees thrive and grow in their roles. Too often the business world pushes the narrative that creating a unique and valuable employee experience is a cursory concern that only large companies have the resources or time to attend to. However, here at PFD, we are big believers in the idea that the culture and environment you create for your employees should be a central part of your business strategy. 

After all, companies grow due to the actions and commitment of those who work there. If you are not taking the time to create an environment in which every employee can succeed, then you are actually hurting your business. To create a company in which every employee is set up for success, we recommend that you take time to invest in three areas of your employee’s life: 

1. Ensuring cultural fit: While it is important that your employees be diverse in talent and experience, it is also equally important that each of your employees share a set of workplace values. This means that there is an understanding of what behaviors are expected and that each employee lives by that. What is crucial as a leader is to ensure that you communicate clearly what those values are on a daily basis. This can minimize conflict and create comfort by increasing clarity of expectations. 

2. Providing opportunities for growth: Your employees want your workplace to be a space where they can grow and reach their full potential. To ensure they are able to do this, you should be providing them with timely coaching and resources for learning. For example, at PFD, I make sure to build mentoring relationships with my employees to ensure that they have the support they need to accomplish all their goals. 

3. Environment: Your physical environment is something that can either add to or detract from the mental wellness of your employees. If your physical environment is sterile and dull, it may be difficult for your employees to focus. On the other hand, if there is natural light and greenery in your workplace, your employees may feel more connected to one another and motivated. You don’t need to have a Google-esque office environment, but it should be clean, comfortable, and welcoming. 

If you’d like to learn more about each of these three steps and how to fully make mentoring and employee experience a part of your business strategy, I highly recommend that you look into ordering our book The Mentorship Engine when it is released this November. The Mentorship Engine will walk you through a repeatable framework with which you can craft a compelling vision for your company and then source and retain the talent you need to fulfill that vision. If you are at all interested in the idea of growing your people while also growing your company, this will be the book for you. Keep an eye out in the coming weeks for a pre-order link.

Quarterly Themes: Creating alignment and Boosting Team Morale

As we have been working in a pandemic for more than a year, there is one thing that all the leaders I have spoken with have agreed upon: we and our teams are exhausted. I am a big believer in optimism, but I am an equally large proponent of addressing what Admiral James Stockdale calls the “brutal facts of your current reality,” and, in this moment, addressing the brutal facts means recognizing that team morale and alignment may be suffering. 

One powerful way to re-inspire your team and bring energy (and fun!) back into your workplace is to announce a quarterly theme that you and your team can rally behind. Quarterly themes are generally created by gathering a representative from each department and/or your leadership team for a quick 45 minute meeting.

In the meeting, you and your team should consider where your company is at, upcoming priorities and future goals. The most important thing to remember while creating this team is that it should create a “win x4;” a win for the company, a win for customers, a win for the employees, and a win for the community. By ensuring that your theme is one that will motivate your employees and create value for customers and community, you will effectively be drawing in a crowd of individuals who will support your work. 

As an example, this quarter we at PFD have decided that our quarterly theme would be “Paddle!” We wanted to capture the idea that in order to catch a great wave of change, you have to put in significant effort to ensure that the wave does not pass you by. As a company, we have several key thrusts in the works, which led us to choose a theme that will remind us to keep paddling so that we can catch a wave that will generate enormous benefits for our team and community. 

Q3 2021 Theme: Paddle! The Key Thrusts have been generalized so as not to give away our strategy.

If you would like more inspiration on potential themes for our company, check out some of our past themes:

Q2 2020 Theme: “Our Finest Hour”. For this theme, we were in the height of uncertainty with the pandemic, and we were searching for empowerment in our team. We found inspiration from another period of history marked with fear and uncertainty, WWII, and specifically Winston’ Churchill’s “This Was Their Finest Hour” speech. It was because of this speech that we decided to rise to the challenge - making that quarter “Our Finest Hour” - and finding creative ways to positively impact 1,000 lives. If you would like to read more about this theme, check out this blog post here.

Q1 2021 Theme: And… Action! For this quarter, we wanted to inspire our team to be very action-oriented, so to accomplish this end, we had our team track their use and adoption of our new project-management software. By ensuring the team used the project management software, they had a clear means to track progress on their projects, thus inspiring action. There also was a celebratory component, as we also had our team members submit photos of the different things they were doing - both within work and outside of work - to commemorate all that been done during the quarter.

Q3 2020 Theme: Partner Pinball (names removed this blog post). For this theme, we wanted our team members to engage with key partners throughout the quarter to help facilitate a strong launch to a project. A star was added next to the name of each partner engaged, to make sure we kept the focus on partners present and at the forefront. The relationships we have with CEOs and other leaders are critical to our success, so we wanted to focus on treating those partners well for the duration of the quarter.

If you would like more help creating your quarterly theme, I recommend this 9-minute video: Developing a Theme for Your Team.

Capturing the Momentum of the Economic Recovery: Accelerate Your Growth in the Second Half of 2021

If you are a business leader, you are likely still experiencing the lingering effects and stress of the global pandemic. You might be facing supply shortages, a reduced pipeline, and staffing shortages, as well as lingering doubts from the challenges you have endured from the last year. This being said, you also likely know that the economy is recovering – spending is increasing, unemployment is dropping, and by the end of the year, the gross domestic product is even projected to reach, at least temporarily, the path that was projected for it had the pandemic never happened.

 Now, as a leader of your company, you might be in a rather challenging position. For over a year, you had to firefight – dealing with an unpredictable market in a time of international uncertainty, while also taking care of the people you employ and in your community. Now, to scale your business and capitalize on the economic recovery, you must switch mentalities – from surviving to thriving. While this might sound challenging, we have three tips on actions you can take to put yourself in the right headspace for growth in the second half of 2021.

Align to a Mission

First, to get out of your head, we recommend that you focus on something that is bigger than yourself.  At PFD, we are deeply passionate about the profound importance of having a vision and mission for your life and company, how they can clarify your thinking, and get you out of daily firefighting. By creating or reconnecting with a mission and vision for your company and your life, you can become inspired again – aligning toward where you would like to be long-term, and taking steps to get there. This can be an effective way to fight against burnout and reignite passion. If you would like to learn more about creating an effective vision and purpose for your company, check out the blog post here.

Get the Right People

Getting the right people into your organization can be the greatest opportunity and the greatest challenge that you face. On one hand, with unemployment decreasing, the market is getting more competitive to find great talent, but on the other, having the right people in the right roles will be transformational for your organization. Often, to get the right people, you have to be creative. To create a creative sourcing plan, take fifteen minutes to consider the questions below to identify potential sources of talent that fit your company culture:

1. Who do you need to talk to at your local Universities or Community Colleges?

2. Are there nonprofits aligned with your mission whose board you need to be on?

3. Are there major community events that you need to chair or be on the planning committee for?

4. Are there other well-run organizations whose leaders you need to partner with?

5. Who are the five most influential people in your industry that you should talk to?

6. Who are the five most influential people in your community that you should talk to?

7. Who do you need to buy lunch?

Focus on what you can control

Finally, while there is a lot about our businesses that are not directly in our control, like supply chains and sales pipelines, we suggest that you focus on what you can control. It is a simple concept - easier said than done. We have found that there are two things senior teams can do that will set you up for growth in the latter half of 2021.

1. Cultivate Operational Excellence

   If your pipeline is slow at the moment, perhaps you can use this season where you are less busy to cultivate operational excellence in your organization. Perhaps this means you roll out a new project management software, or any other software you have been avoiding putting into your organization because of the length of time it will take to install. Perhaps you update employee manuals, get the team into an online dashboard, or cultivate a coaching rhythm that allows you to coach your team candidly and consistently for success. Whatever the case, use this time to intentionally work on your operations so that you and your team have the capacity for growth later in the year.

2. Conduct Senior Leader Planning Sessions

   Having the right people in the right roles on your team is critical for success. These are the people, if they are A Players, that will come up with creative solutions for challenges and help reignite passion among your other senior team members. Having the right people in these key roles, and actively communicating with these people via senior leader planning sessions, will take pressure off you as the CEO and lead to better outcomes overall.

With the economic recovery already happening, right now is when we need to invest time and energy to transforming our mindset and business to scale. If you would like to inquire about senior planning sessions, please contact us here.

Why do I Need a Strategic Coach?

As sports fans, we would never expect our favorite athletes to win games without coaches. Could you imagine an Olympic gymnast getting a gold medal without someone to correct their form and push their limits? Could you imagine an American football team winning the Superbowl with the Quarterback responsible for calling all the plays, analyzing the opposing team, and coaching the defense in addition to the offense?

When we think of professional athletes, we understand how ridiculous it is to expect them to compete and win on a high level without a coach. This being said, when it comes to business leaders, we tend to expect them to perform at extraordinarily high levels without a similar kind of guidance. Like athletes, business leaders are professionals. They need to understand their strategy, execute that strategy, pivot to various demands, consistently be learning new skills, work with and lead their teams, all so that they can win in the marketplace. With all of these duties, plus ensuring that the day-to-day activities are completed, there is an extreme amount of pressure on the CEO and leadership team. This is where a business coach can help.  

Take a look at this video of Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt:

Despite the need for a coach, we have found that, in the market, there is some confusion as to what exactly strategic coaches do. Let’s provide some clarity.

Reduce stress by creating simplicity in strategy and building teams 

“I really enjoy working with Ethan for not only his creative strategic insights, but also for his ability to recruit and inspire diverse teams for lasting results.”

— Barrington Irving, CEO & Founder of Experience Aviation

First and foremost, as strategic coaches, our goal is to reduce your stress as CEOs. Typically, when CEOs come to us for coaching services, they spend the majority of their days firefighting – jumping from task to task that is necessary for business survival. In the past, when their company was smaller, these CEOs could handle many of these smaller tasks personally. As the company scales, however, these leaders find that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to handle all that is asked from them, and their days are becoming filled very quickly with duties that don’t seem to matter this much. Exacerbating these stressful days, if the CEO were to continue like this, it is very unlikely that the company would grow, because the CEO doesn’t have time to spend on their vision of the future, nor do they have the time to guide their team in getting there.

As a coaching company, it is our job to help you get out of this daily firefighting mode through both helping you simplify your strategy, as well as build a phenomenal team of leaders to support you in making that strategy come to fruition. Unnecessary complexity breeds wasted time. We will help you gain confidence and clarity in an actionable strategy that you are excited about. Further, we will engage your leadership team in the planning process, creating alignment around the strategy. We will also advise on any significant gaps in the leadership team, and how to fill them in with the right people. Many of the tasks that take up a CEO’s time could realistically be handled by a different, trusted member of the leadership team, and these team members could take on even more responsibility to drive the company into its next stage of growth. This both frees the CEO’s time to work on the business (as opposed to in the business), while creating sustainable growth.

““Everything that your team has done for us has enabled us to grow and learn in ways that are not just solving problems and putting out fires. You can get so bogged down in the minutiae of chasing your tail, and if you don’t dedicate time to growing leaders, you’re going to end up running everything in your company. And that’s not what I wanted to do. I didn’t want my job to own me.””

— Cory Prellwitz, Co-owner of Hometrends LLC

Deep knowledge of proven growth tools and execution rhythms

I’ve never gone to the gym and benefitted from watching someone else lift weights. I’ve had personal trainers show me how to lift weights, walk me through the proper form several times so I am confident and clear on my exercise routine, and that has been extremely helpful. The real power of going to the gym comes when I take what I’ve learned, and I consistently put it into practice – exercising consistently using proper form and routines. It is when I do that, that the trainer can coach me to the next level, introducing more advanced lifts and increasing weight.

At PFD, we have a similar approach to a personal trainer. With twenty years of entrepreneurial and coaching experience, plus coaching certifications through Scaling Up and 3HAG Way, we have in-depth knowledge of the strategic tools and execution rhythms that have helped thousands of companies scale their practices. Further than that, we have invested in our team to be able to support the integration of these systems into your company. Our Director of Client Success, Karissa Feese, has been doing an amazing job with our current clients teaching the software systems to leadership team members to keep the strategy central to day-to-day activities. Importantly, we won’t fill out or update these tools for you, as that would be like going to the gym and watching the trainer lift your weights for you. Rather, by implementing use of the tools, execution rhythms and software, your team will become stronger.

“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

Being a trusted confidant and seeing the blind spots.

Finally, as a coach, it is my job to understand and help CEOs work through the things that have been keeping them up at night. We have the privilege of working with many CEOs across several industries, which gives us the ability to see reoccurring patterns and creatively produce solutions. When you’re in a company each day, it is inevitable to develop blind spots. Through our position as a coaching company, it is our duty to surface those issues to be solved, so that you are not blindsided by them at a later point. At PFD, one of our core values is to be the confidant - nurturing a culture of confidentiality, trust, and vulnerability. We recognize our responsibility in our positions as coaches, because when our clients reach out to us, they share their greatest opportunities and challenges. We do not take this responsibility lightly.

““Ethan, thank you for your constant encouragement and coaching. I could not have done it without you over the last two years. Thank you for being you - a compassionate, caring, coach.””

— Vijay Sajja, CEO, Evergent

As the CEO, you are the quarterback and the captain of your team.  You are on the field, leading your team, making the plays, and driving your business forward. You deserve to have someone have your back. As a coach, we have a vested interest in your growth, both as a leader and within your company. We aim to reduce your stress by drive simplicity in your strategy and building a strong leadership team around you, and we will help you implement execution rhythms and tools to consistently make progress on your strategy. Simply put, we will help you grow, while simultaneously helping you make running a company easier.

Life Planning in Uncertainty

In my last post, I provided an overview of a Vision Board and the benefits in seeing your dreams on a board that you develop. Vision Boards provide personal motivation and make each day purpose-driven -  even the difficult days. In turbulent times, life dreaming and planning may feel empty. We might feel like planning our long-term future is futile when the next few weeks are unpredictable. However, in times like we are all currently facing, this sort of life planning is more important than ever. This life planning gives us a “North Star” to always be aligning to, to make progress on, and to give us hope, regardless of the immediate difficulties we are facing.

Below are a few helpful reminders that should guide you as you dive into life planning in times of uncertainty:

Facts over feelings. 

Whether it is a global pandemic or a personal hardship, we tend to focus on the immediate feelings and make decisions based on that immediacy. Unfortunately, those feelings tend to be anxiety and fear based. Life planning allows us to focus on facts, future, and hope - taking a step back from our current circumstances that are causing us to fear. When we take a step back, we can contextualize those circumstances so we can make wise decisions. 

Focus on short term wins.

In turbulent times, it can be difficult to feel like we are making any progress on our goals, when we are consistently dealing with little emergencies that arise. So, to make sure we are indeed moving forward, we need to focus on the “little wins” that will eventually add up to larger wins, and eventually into your goals being accomplished. During a particularly difficult time in my life, I had a friend tell me that if “day by day” was too big, focus on “minute by minute”. In times of stress and overwhelm, Vision Boards, or any type of life planning can feel too big. We encourage you not to turn away from those big dreams, but instead focus on what you can “win” at in the short-term. A great place to start is with self-care goals like eating properly, drinking enough water, daily journaling, reading positive content. Those short-term wins will propel your desire and ability to achieve more.

Build new life skills.

“Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.”

― Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Life will always throw curve balls at us. It is how we handle those times and what we learn from it, that will determine our future. Learning how to deal with challenges will make the next challenge easier to overcome. Angela Duckworth’s book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, is an excellent book that focuses on cultivation of tenacity. If you truly want to accomplish your big-picture life goals, you will need to learn new life skills. The person who has accomplished those goals (the person who you will be) is wiser, more experienced, more tenacious, and has more skills than you. It will take grit and tenacity through challenges to become that person, and you will need to persevere through your circumstances and challenges to get there.

With these three reminders in mind, I encourage you to take a step back from the present uncertainty of the world and either create or revisit your life plan. It is critical that you continue to engage with this plan to give yourself hope and something to work towards to effectively navigate this challenging time.

If you need some direction into your life planning, check out our blog post on vision boarding here.

Purpose at the Center of a Competitive Business Strategy

Model for the Triple Bottom Line

In this day and age, we are coming to understand that the social impact we have as businesses affect our ability to be functioning and profitable businesses. The idea of social responsibility when it comes to business is not new – in fact the idea of corporate social responsibility was created in 1953 by American Economist Howard Bowen, and thus was born the idea that businesses had a social contract with the society around them, and they therefore have an obligation to serve the needs of that society. In the 1980’s, R. Edward Freeman furthered this idea and created stakeholder theory, which modeled out the specific stakeholders and groups (e.g. employees, investors, government, community) to which companies should give regard when it comes to making decisions. In the 1990’s, another thought leader like John Elkington created the idea of the Triple Bottom Line that specifically looks at a business’ impact on people, profit and planet. This means that a company’s financial, social, and environmental performance is intentionally measured over time, to truly account for the full cost of doing business and to understand how we can improve our business functioning. Long story short: we’ve known about our companies’ responsibilities to the community and world around us for nearly seventy years, at the time this book is being written. We have made continual improvements and advancements to our understanding of these ideas of social responsibility, and it is becoming a necessary consideration to how we operate our companies.

The idea has been that corporations exist to maximize shareholder value, but corporations are starting to realize that if you only focus on [financial returns], you create resistance for your growth, and that diminishes shareholder value over the long run. A smarter strategy is one that creates wealth by benefiting other stakeholders. When your growth is good for the community, employees, customers, government, the country, environment, the world, and thereby good for shareholders, that is the ultimate strategy, because everybody wants you to win. - Kaihan Krippendorf

In my quest to understand how love and service can impact business strategy and operations, am presently inspired by new research coming out of Oxford in partnership with Mars, Incorporated on the Economics of Mutuality (EoM). I would argue EoM is a better, more advanced version of the stakeholder model.

A Simplified Model for the Economics of Mutuality - with purpose at the center

In Economics of Mutuality, a key question that is asked is, “what is the right amount of profit for a business to make?”, and it contends that maximum profits are not the “right amount of profits. This aligns with the stakeholder model, and it goes one step further. According to Dr. Jay Jakub, the Senior Client Advisor, Chief Advocacy Officer at EoM, Incorporated and pioneer in research regarding the economics of mutuality, the purpose of business is to create profitable solutions for the problems of people and the planet. In my understanding, this model differs from the stakeholder model in one key aspect: instead of viewing various stakeholders in relation to the firm, the company views itself as one of the many stakeholders.

Essentially, in this model it is not the business that is central, rather, the larger, societal purpose that the business hopes to advance is central.

This means that the business itself exists to do societal good, and it is a core part of the strategy and day-to-day operations, rather than Corporate Social Responsibility being one of the considerations a business makes in its overall strategy. In this movement, many stakeholder pain-points and motivations are evaluated, and non-fiscal performance metrics are emphasized to ensure that the social good that is being done is measurable. This approach is remarkable because it works. There have been several case studies that have come out of the EoM that have shown that regardless of the market or industry, companies have found success investing in the relationships of employees and the community at large, and this yielded greater financial returns for the business, as well as impressive results across human and social capital metrics. This human-centric approach worked for the distribution of Wrigley products in East Africa, where a new business model was developed to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit of the region, meet unique market conditions, and develop trust in the community. This approach also worked in Panama, where a construction company called Conservatorio was able to engage in projects of urban revitalization without a normal gentrification process, instead helping low-income residents take advantage of the revitalization process while keeping cultural centers intact. This approach also worked for SAP, the ERP system company, where an integrated strategy that focused on economic, social, and ecological consequences of their actions within a larger ecosystem contributed to a better financial performance and more trust in senior leadership.

As it turns out, developing meaningful relationships and being a positive force for good in the lives of your employees and your community is a viable business strategy – regardless of the industry we are in or the market we have.

When we take the time to truly humble ourselves, to understand how our actions impact the broader society in which we operate, and to actively choose to love and serve people around us, people will notice, and they will want to see us succeed.

What Should Your Office Look Like? Creating a Workspace that Promotes Wellness and Productivity

We often underestimate just how much our physical environment impacts us, but it impacts us immensely. Many of us have been working at home lately, and for a few of us, it improved our productivity, but for the vast majority of us, it made it much harder to work the hours that we were used to. The average person will work 90,000 hours in their lifetime. That’s a lot of time to be spending in a space that is dull, cluttered, dark or nondescript. The spaces that we exist in affect our health and our ability to perform, and while we like to deny this fact for the sake of cutting costs in our business, we do intuitively know this to be true. We’ve been in spaces that are like a breath of fresh air – perhaps they have exposed brick, high ceilings, and plants everywhere, and they genuinely feel nice to go into. Conversely, we’ve been in spaces that are overwhelming and stress us out – they are filled with clutter, unkempt, and with little natural light. If we were trying to work long-term in the second space, we would feel more exhausted, less creative, less satisfied and less motivated. Our spaces should energize us, inspire us, and motivate us and our employees. So, as we get back to our offices when it’s safe to do so, it might be a worthwhile endeavor to upgrade our spaces to this end.

What would it look like to be able to step into your workspace and immediately know what kind of culture you have? Likely, if you have never considered this question, your environment is affecting your culture, you just haven’t put much thought into how. This isn’t to say that you necessarily have a bad culture if your workspace is uninspiring but think of how much better your culture could be if your employees were excited just to exist in your office each day because your company put some thought into how it looks and feels. When we get our office spaces right, we can only add to and show off our culture and company.

Evergent Office in Hyderabad, India

Consider a case study from one of our clients - Evergent - and their office in Hyderabad, India.

Evergent Hyderabad Office - Inspiring quotes, and open and ergonomic work space

They hired a top interior design firm Zyeta to transform a new, gorgeous 36,000 square foot office to emphasize employee health, collaboration and creativity.  Now, when you walk into the Evergent office, you’ll see a clean, organized, naturally lit and modern space, with brightly colored furniture, numerous plants, and different textures on the walls to add subtle visual interest. You’ll see giant, inspiring quotes that emphasize their creativity and global reach, ergonomically-focused furniture, and community spaces that allow for gathering – both in a work setting and on breaks. One of the things that Evergent wanted to emphasize was transparency and accountability to foster their culture of excellence and teamwork, so they decided to make all of the meeting rooms have large class doors and walls so anyone could easily see inside. There are no secrets to what you are working on, and you can easily reach and collaborate with all of the other people you could need.

Evergent Hyderabad Office gym to promote employee wellness

The Evergent office is made complete with a gym, and foosball and ping-pong tables. The office is so beautiful, that it has been toured by other big tech companies for them to get ideas on how they can improve their own spaces. Best of all, this new office reflects Evergent’s brilliant and colorful culture, and holds central the well-being and thriving of their employees.  Now, when new hires enter the building to begin their two-week onboarding process, they enter into a space that shows just how much Evergent cares about them and their success.

Now, when we think of incredible office design, we tend to think that considerations for the office are reserved for only the bigger companies, because we tend to believe that it is out of our budget or expertise. Perhaps we are going to the wrong places for inspiration. When we think of office interior design, we think of tech companies with slides between the floors of the office or a rock-climbing gym, or creative agencies with beer on tap in the kitchen. What we should know is that having foosball tables or treadmill desks is not a prerequisite to creating an office that is inspiring – and we should invest in beautiful and functional working spaces regardless of the industry we are in. Now, I am not a designer, nor should I be. I have created my fair share of unstylish places, and there are plenty of books you can read on office design from experts that are far more talented than me in this area. This being said, below are some considerations that I have found should be taken into consideration when you transform your working environment for your employees.

1. Your environment should have what you need

The first thing we need to consider is this question: do we have what we need to do our jobs? Our office design should, first and foremost, be functional. Our employees should have the right tools in the right space to be able to get their work done. When I was early in my career, working as an internship, nothing drove me crazier when I was given old, outdated equipment that would impede my ability to get tasks done. Make sure your employees have the right equipment to be able to do their tasks. If you have to do a lot of brainstorming and whiteboarding, make sure you have whiteboards throughout your office. If you have creatives who need to share their work with others, make sure you have TVs in the meeting rooms that they can connect to gather feedback. If you have a manufacturing facility, make sure your equipment is optimized for production and safety. If you need people to collaborate, have an open floor plan. If you need people to go and do deep work by themselves, have offices with walls. If you need both, have a combination of an open floor plan with smaller offices with walls. If you need an agility and flexibility, build that into your workspace with moveable tables and chairs on wheels. The needs you have for your business should be held central to your considerations when creating an office.

Evergent Hyderabad Office - includes open floor plan to promote collaboration, whiteboards, chairs on wheels to promote agility and flexibility, and meeting spaces that have TVs for presentations for feedback

2. Your environment should inspire you.

These next questions might seem obvious, but it is often overlooked when it comes to designing the office, and that is: What sort of spaces inspire you? Where do you get your best work done? While the idea is to create an office that is inspiring to everyone, you as the CEO lead and set the culture of your workspace, so your spaces should speak to you. Really consider these questions, and don’t answer them in a way that you think you should but aren’t actually reflective of where you are at. If you would do better in a cozy space with lower ceilings and a large armchair over an open-concept floor plan, take that into consideration. Take a look at these couple unconventional working spaces:

My “office” on an airplane - picture taken before the global pandemic

For me, where I absolutely get my best work done is sitting on an airplane. No kidding – for me, there’s something magical about being suspended 30,000 feet in the air, looking down at the earth below me. When I get on a flight, I am flooded with ideas and energy to tackle those ideas. Travel in general absolutely inspires me, so on years that aren’t affected by a pandemic, I would sometimes take day trips to work on my business and our strategic direction. On these days, I would get up early and head to the Denver International Airport, and I’d be in a new city by noon, where I’d spend some time, and be back home that night. I’d also travel to run our client offsites, so I’d spend quite a bit of time in the best office I could possibly have, where I am traveling at 500 knots and my desk is a tray table. These days and investment in travel are a reliably some of the best uses of my time - I’ll come up with ideas that I could have never done sitting back at home. What does this mean for our office that is headquartered in Colorado? First, I let some of my design-minded employees who spend more time in it than me optimize it for their needs.  Second, our office is travel-inspired. We have numerous pictures on our walls from the international places that we’ve gone and the people we met while we were there. These people, places, and cultures are consistent reminders of why we do what we do – to steward a movement, no matter where you are born, anything is possible. We are on a global mission to empower workplaces to create opportunities of thriving and upward mobility for everyone. Whether I am soaring 30,000 feet high in an aircraft, or I am in an office in the mile-high city, I am reminded of that, and I am inspired.

Bob Goff, working on Tom Sawyer Island, picture taken from his Twitter.

When I think of another unconventional office space, I immediately think of Bob Goff, New York Times Best Seller and founder of the Love Does, an organization that fights for human rights and education for children in conflict zones. In his book with the same name as his organization, Bob revealed he had a rather unusual office: he worked out of Tom Sawyer Island at Disneyland. He started there when he was a lawyer and law professor, worked there, and held office hours there for his students. While Disney may not have recognized Tom Sawyer Island as officially Bob’s office, working out of that particular little corner of Disneyland really works for him. Bob has an unusually attuned sense of whimsy, and he found it to be particularly inspiring – where he could reflect and understand who he was created to be and work accordingly.

With these two unconventional examples, this is to say, figure out what inspires you, and really run with it and incorporate it into your office space and design. As CEO, you have a lot of control over your workplace culture. How you show up every day matters to the overall tone and feel of your company, so your space should give you energy and creative inspiration.  

3. Your environment should be authentic to your company culture.

Our next consideration is a very important one, and that is: what is authentic to your company culture? If nobody in your company would honestly use a ping pong table in the break room, don’t waste your money in buying it. Dig into the culture you have, return to your foundational elements, like your core values and core purpose, and figure out the type of things to go into your space that would enhance that experience.

Evergent Hyderabad Office - Glass offices to promote transparency and accountability - something they really care about

As an example, while I greatly admire Evergent’s decision to have all glass conference rooms or open spaces in their Hyderabad office, I would never make that decision for my own office. Why? Because one of our core values is “Be the Confidant” – At PFD Group, we nurture a culture of confidentiality, trust, and vulnerability. When our clients reach out to us, they share their greatest opportunities and challenges. There are highly sensitive and confidential conversations that I regularly have with my clients. It would be imprudent and thoughtless of me to not have at least one office with soundproofing and opaque walls and doors so I can have these sorts of conversations. This isn’t to knock on Evergent’s decision to have such a transparent office – for their culture and office needs, a transparent and open workspace is a highly strategic and effective choice. In fact, like them, we have meeting rooms that our team can gather and strategize. But unlike Evergent, we have to design our space to support our core value of “Be the Confidant”, and that is important to note.

4. Your environment should support health and wellness

When I first started my coaching practice, I had an office in a co-working space. It was a smaller office, without any windows to the outside, only to the rest of the building. It worked for what I needed. I didn’t find it to be particularly inspiring, but that was okay, because I didn’t spend much of my time in the office anyway. Since I do my best work when I travel, I was always taking meetings around town, flying on airplanes to offsites, so I really was only in the office for short periods of time. As my business grew, I hired an Executive Assistant named Emmalee, and, after a few months, we outgrew the little office in the co-working building. As we looked for new offices, Emmalee had one request: that it have a window with sunlight. Because I spent so much of my time out of the office, I hadn’t considered the necessity of a window. Emmalee was spending so much time in the darker office, that inevitably, by 3:00pm each day, she felt drained and sluggish, even though she genuinely enjoyed her work and was learning a lot. When we moved offices, we got a space with a huge window overlooking the front range of the Rocky Mountains. With this change to our space, Emmalee reported that the days felt much shorter, and she remained energized and motivated throughout, increasing her productivity and capability. In fact, she is now no longer my executive assistant, but she heads up our marketing and client education efforts. To have such an office was undoubtedly a worthwhile investment.

Amazon’s Seattle Spheres.

There are many things we could consider when creating health in our working environment, but I want to focus on a couple of key elements that I believe should be in all offices. The first, is making sure we have the right layout and furniture to encourage health, whether this be through buying ergonomic furniture, or creating an office layout that encourages people to walk throughout the day. The second is to make sure we have elements of nature in our offices –through sunlight and plants. There are ample studies that show that having plants incorporated into our working spaces not only improve our mental and physical well-being, but they also boost our productivity. Natural light stimulates human metabolism and regulates blood pressure, while artificial light induces fatigue. 

One shot of the inside of Amazon’s Seattle Spheres. For more information, head to https://www.seattlespheres.com/

Large companies like Amazon are starting to understand this, making huge investments in creating sunny and plant-filled offices to give them a creative edge. The best example of Amazon’s work in this this called the spheres located in Seattle. The building is comprised of three large spheres, with glass to let natural light in, and more than 40,000 plants. Why did they invest all of this time and money? They recognize that people think and work differently when surrounded by plants.

My wife Kate’s family used to own a particularly special and inspiring space called Caribou Ranch. It was a recording studio built out of a converted barn in the Rocky Mountains near Nederland Colorado. Before a fire burned it down it 1985, it was an iconic recording studio.  Famous bands and artists like Elton John, Michael Jackson, Earth Wind & Fire, Chicago, Stevie Wonder and Amy Grant recorded there, and many of the albums and songs went platinum and won Grammys. Elton John even named one of his albums that he recorded there “Caribou”. Kate’s family knew there was something special about bringing talented people to a place where trees and mountains loomed overhead. Going there is like a breath of fresh air, where you could get needed reprieve and clear your head to do your best creative work.

Caribou Ranch - an inspiring setting for a recording studio

While you might not be able to create a near-biodome in the heart of Seattle or build a mountain campus, you can still incorporate plants and greenery into your spaces, and I encourage it.  In your office designs, make the investment of cultivating health. Not only give your employees a chance to have good furniture and to walk around, but also make sunlight and nature (like plants) be a central part of your office design. Your employees will be happier, healthier, more satisfied with their jobs, more productive, and more likely to produce their best creative work.

Evergent Office in Hyderabad - natural elements of plants and sunlight incorporated throughout

5. You can make small changes over time that add up to a cohesive design goal.

 If you don’t have the budget, these changes to your space don’t have to be made overnight. It is okay to slowly build a cohesive and beautiful office space over time – to prioritize the highest-leverage design elements and save the rest for when you have the budget and cash and buy other pieces later. Perhaps one quarter you will invest in whiteboards and a TV in your war room, and another quarter you will replace the desks, tables, and chairs. The important thing is that you make progress to bettering your space and culture. Small changes that you are making to create a better your space will still contribute positively to your employee experience. If you were to build slowly, make sure you have a plan for your needs and your space, so you don’t waste money on furniture or items that don’t match what you functionally need, or undercuts the design at a later point.

At PFD, as we have been building our coaching practice, we have prioritized different office design needs over time. In one iteration of our office (Q3 2019), we prioritized the creation of a War Room, so our strategy was highly visible. War Rooms can get messy-looking, which can undermine their functionality, so we used acrylic sheets as a design solution. The acrylic sheets anchored the War Room materials, giving it a clean, cohesive look, while also providing the functionality of a dry-erase board that allowed for the war room to be routinely updated.

6. If you don’t have the design talent to pull this off, find someone who does!

What if you’re like me, and you don’t have the design skillset to create an amazing office space? Like Evergent, you could get a professional interior design firm to come in, and create a beautiful office that is perfectly tailored to your needs. While, as CEO, you are in charge of the overall culture and employee experience, you don’t need to be and shouldn’t be personally in charge of every little detail. It’s okay to hire the right people to overhaul your environment. What if you have the resources to buy new furniture, but not necessarily to hire an entire interior design firm? That’s okay – having a great looking office space is still possible for you and your employees! If you don’t have the skillset, find someone who does! Perhaps one of your current employees would be interested in self-teaching interior design and would be happy to take on your working environment as a special project. That’s what happened for me - several of my employees have been quite happy to take over our interior design. Perhaps you could go to your local college’s design school and find an intern who would vastly benefit from having an entire office that they conceptualized and put together on their portfolio. Perhaps your spouse has a talented friend who just had a baby and is looking for a flexible gig while they raise their child. Whoever you hire to get the job done, just make sure they have context into your culture, needs, sources of inspiration, and elements that support health, like sunlight and plants. The possibilities are endless, it just takes some creativity into finding the right people to making it happen.

A suggestion: take some time (10-30 minutes) to brainstorm to truly consider your working environment and and write down:

1. What would it look like to be able to step into your workspace and immediately know what kind of culture you have?

2. In your current office space, does everyone have what we need to do their jobs? If not, what’s missing?

3. What sort of spaces inspire you? Where do you get your best work done? How could you incorporate what inspires you into your current space?

4. When it comes to working spaces, what is authentic to your company culture? What do your employees enjoy doing? What do you value, and what might it look like to incorporate what you value into your design?

5. Do you have any sunlight or plants in your office? Do you have opportunities for your employees to move around or sit in ergonomic furniture?  If the answer is no, what do you need to do to incorporate these elements into your workspace?

6. Who do you need to make this possible? If it is not you, what can you feasibly do to get the right people to transform your workspace?

7. What are you doing to make your home work space inspiring until you can get safely back to the office? Do you have plants? Ergonomic furniture? A standing desk? Are you going for walks frequently?

Vision Boarding: Creating Your Future and Your Personal Why

There is no correct time to invest in personal growth, but the beginning of each year is always a motivator for people to lay out big plans for their personal life. Here at PFD, we encourage companies to have a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal), 3HAG, and 1HAG, but we are also working on our personal Vision Boards (VB).

A Vision Board is your personal WHY.

That feeling of being overwhelmed or feeling like you are on a hamster wheel is taxing on your mental and physical health. A VB is a fabulous tool to keep you motivated and focused, which is enormously important as we all continue to face uncertain times.

My (Liz Kaufman’s) Vision Board - Pictures on a useable whiteboard. It has some visual elements with a focus on functionality, as I wanted the ability to regularly update it with words that are inspiring to me.

Whether you have built a VB in the past or if this is your first time, we have some advice on how to get started:

Know What You Want

Most advice with regards to building a VB includes, “if you have no time or money limitations, what do you want”. This advice is exactly what is needed, but can be overwhelming, therefore we have two activities to help:

• MY 75 – Taking the advice of no limitations due to time, money, or circumstances, list 75 things you want and want to achieve. Do not overthink this activity, just begin listing your hearts’ desires. Here are a few questions to help you get started:

  •  Where do you want to go?

  • Who do you want to meet?

  • What do you want to read and/or learn?

  • Who do you want to help?

  • What is the newest gadget that makes you excited?

  • What relationships would you like to grow?

• I AM statements – This activity is used by many personal growth coaches. When you write down “I AM” statements, it helps you actualize who you want to become. This is about your heart, mind, and soul. Words are the building blocks of your life, so ensure you are speaking positive words about yourself. Here are a few statements to help you get started:

  • I am generous with my money and time

  • I am respected within my care

  • I am part of a caring and loving family

  • I am an entrepreneur

  • I am confident

  • I am a home owner

Emmalee Harper’s Vision Board. It is made on two acrylic sheets sandwiched together, with printed pictures in between. It is highly visual and design-focused, with some added functionality of being able to write on it with a dry-erase marker. 

Build Your Vision Board

There is no right or wrong way to build your VB. There are only two qualifications; it should fit your personality/style and you should be able to see it daily. Here are a few ideas:

Materials

All you need is a blank wall, some pictures, paper, and tape, however, there are many examples of materials that can build a Vision Board that will work for your space and personality. A few ideas include:

• Corkboard 

• Whiteboard

• Acrylic Board (following this tutorial)

• Canvas

• Blank wall

• Window 

Style

Whether it be highly stylized or simple, it should be both functional and energizing. At PFD we have three examples of styles that you’ll see throughout this post:

• My (Liz’s) Vision Board - Pictures on a useable whiteboard. It has some visual elements with a focus on functionality, as I wanted the ability to regularly update it with words that are inspiring to me.

• Emmalee Harper’s Vision Board – It is made on two acrylic sheets sandwiched together, with printed pictures in between. It is highly visual and design-focused, with added some functionality of being able to write on it with a dry-erase marker. She also added some gold leaf to the pictures as an extra, fun touch.

• Ethan Martin’s Vision Board - Magazine clippings on canvas. It is highly visual, comprised of inspiring pictures and quotes.

Content

You do not need to include everything from you, MY 75 or I AM statements, but ensure your board is a mix of categories, personal growth, inspirational quotes, huge aspirations that scare you, short term wins that will energize you, and anything else that speaks to you. This board is YOU poured out into a visualization; it is not supposed to speak to someone else.

Ethan Martin’s Vision Board - Magazine clippings on canvas. It is highly visual, comprised of inspiring pictures and quotes.

Keep Your Board Fresh

As you achieve a win, first celebrate it, then replace it with a new goal (which is why you developed a My 75 and I AM statements). Adding to it often helps you to work on your future and refine the view of your life. Some areas may come into deeper clarity, while others may stay the same for a year and get moved to the next year. Your VB is always a work in progress. 

The last piece of advice is, get started. Create a grand vision for your life and speak it into existence each day. Though it may seem simple, this is a powerful tool. The PFD Team is here to help and we encourage you to share your Vision Boards, and we will be sharing ours. 

2020 Was Brutal. We Can Undoubtedly Make 2021 Better.

Admiral James Stockdale -
U.S. Navy File Photo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

As written in the Jim Collins' book Good to Great, The Stockdale Paradox refers to Admiral James Stockdale, who was a prisoner-of-war during the Vietnam war. Being highest-in command at the Hanoi Hilton POW camp, Stockdale held the responsibility of creating conditions to increase the survival rate of his men, while also enduring horrible torture and no certainty if he would make it out alive.

It was in these conditions that Stockdale created a very simple formula (the Paradox) to triumph in the most challenging and uncertain of circumstances: 

Acknowledge and confront in every way the brutal facts of your situation and hold onto the unwavering faith that you will prevail in the end.

 As business leaders, we know that 2020 has been tough. As we reflect on the end of this year, we are fully aware that this year has brought challenges unlike anything we have ever seen before. Before this year, we had never used the term “social distancing”, nor had Zoom ever been so popular. We have heard the words uncertainty and unprecedented more times than we could count.  We celebrated birthdays and holidays virtually, we did “drive by” graduation ceremonies, and we became used to working from home or in masks. We watched with bated breath as we saw the racial turmoil unfold, and our hearts sunk as we saw the economy suffer because we knew that meant the loss of jobs and livelihoods for people who really needed it. This year has been undoubtedly difficult, and we would have good reason to perseverate on the challenges this year has brought forth. If we were to take the advice of Admiral Stockdale, we should not only the brutal facts of 2020, but also go forth into 2021 with hopeful optimism that we will prevail through these circumstances.

In short, we ask you to persevere in your vision.

We know that this is no small ask. To succeed in this time doesn’t just take the spirit of perseverance, it takes a well-founded strategy and steadfast execution. Further, it takes seeing the vast opportunities in a market that only seems to have readily visible challenges. There is reason to hope, for a better 2021, and we will need to be able to set ourselves up well to be able to capitalize on some opportunities. After the last pandemic in 1919, the United States saw the roaring 20s, with abundant wealth and a prosperous economy. Experts suggest that 2021 will see a similar economic boom, even if it will take time to get there, with the economy getting worse before it gets better.

So, what’s the secret to capitalizing on all of the opportunities that 2021 has to offer?

Creating a rock-solid annual plan with your senior leadership team.

The end of the year is this extraordinary time to be able to look towards a better future. The annual planning process is crucial to making that future a reality. This process becomes to really step back and look at the market in a meaningful way. Further, we can use this time to reengage with our customers to understand how their needs are changing and evolving. With our leadership teams, we should be asking great questions of each other, having productive and honest conversations - thoroughly hashing out our strategy. Through these conversations we can come to understand where the white space is for our businesses, and we can end up on a much better, simpler path that we can effectively execute. Our teams understand fully the brutal facts of 2020. It is our job to, with unwavering faith, create a strategy and execution plan that will allow us to prevail in 2021.

At PFD, we’ve been really blessed to have a fantastic methodology and effective virtual tools to be able to facilitate annual planning sessions. If you would like to know more about our process to scale businesses or book an annual planning session for you and your entire senior team, please fill out the form below.

The PFD Manifesto: A Declaration of Our Commitment to Serving

2020 has undoubtedly been a tumultuous year. Throughout this year, we have been challenged like never before - trying to navigate ever-present circumstances out of our control. At PFD, we think the end of this year is an excellent time to share with you our manifesto. Our manifesto has three elements: our Core Values, our Core Purpose, and our BHAG. By reconnecting with what we stand for as a company and envisioning the big picture of where we are going, it has helped us tremendously with our resiliency. This is because the elements in our manifesto allow us to remain steadfast while continuing to pursue a greater mission despite the uncertainty in the world. Because it has been helpful for us, we want to share what we created with you. Further, as a part of our continued commitment to serving our business community, we wanted to share with you how to create and roll out your own manifesto in your organization as a source of inspiration for your people.

Step 1: Decide the Elements - your Core Values, Core Purpose, and BHAG.

Your first step in creating your manifesto is to create the different elements that go into it. Below, you will see a description of the different elements to include. These elements are tricky, so if you need assistance in creating them, please reach out to us. We would be happy to help.

Manifesto Element I: Core Values

 Your core values ask this question: what are the consistent, accepted behaviors of your team members? The key to core values to drive behavior, and they are utterly meaningless if CEO isn’t protecting and stewarding them. These core values drive everything that we do, and the communicate to the world what we stand for. The purpose of your core values is to empower your employees – they will never not know what to do in a situation because they have very specific values there to guide them in making decisions. Your employees should never get in trouble for following the core values – when they follow them, this means they are self-initiating productive behavior that holds true to the best interest for the company. 

At PFD, our Core Values are:

Grow to Give

We take on a growth and learning mindset so we are best equipped to help our clients ability to grow and scale their impact. We strive to have a servant leader mentality so that we are able to approach everything with humility and to best serve others.

Create Client Value

We serve as the trusted guide for the CEO and their leadership team through finding better ways, providing exceptional service, anticipating needs, and seeing around the curves.

Communicate Proactively

We lean in and have the conversation so that there are no surprises.

Invest in our team and community

We are better together. We mentor and serve each other, and we steward the lives around us.

Be the Confidant

We nurture a culture of confidentiality, trust, and vulnerability. When our clients reach out to us, they share their greatest opportunities and challenges.

Manifesto Element II: The BHAG

The BHAG is a concept from Jim Collins, and it stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goal. Our BHAG creates our North Star that we can use to navigate our companies. It is our 10-to-30 year goal that allows us to have something to work towards, despite the rockiness of the circumstances around us. The importance of the BHAG should not be understated. It creates a compelling mission for the company – an inspiring, unifying focal point that stimulates and energizes the team to make vast progress.

At PFD, our BHAG is to steward a movement, that, no matter where you are born, anything is possible. 

We believe that business can be a force for good in the world around us. We strive to empower the leaders we work with leverage their businesses to make a positive difference in their teams and their communities. We know that the average person will spend 90,000 hours working in their lifetimes, and this gives us tremendous opportunity to create meaningful and empowering workplaces that allow people to get to anywhere they want to go. We know that we can’t do this alone, so we will intentionally spend our time inspiring and empowering workplaces around us to make a meaningful difference in the lives around them.

Manifesto Element III: Core Purpose

The core purpose answers one very specific question: why does your company exist? It’s a very simple concept, but it is critical that everyone in your organization knows the answer to it. If everyone knows what your core purpose is, you are able to keep on track with your strategic vision, because it creates alignment toward your way of being.

At PFD, our Core Purpose is to steward lives. We believe stewardship is a very powerful concept. Simply put: we are blessed to have the resources we have, and we want to leverage those resources to positively impact the lives of the people around us.

Step 2: Design a graphic.  

In this day and age, design is everything. We recommend creating a graphic that shows the manifesto so that it comes alive. Rather than just being words on a document somewhere, we want to create a dynamic image that captures the eye, to draw attention to our team and the world what we stand for.

At PFD, one of our in-house designers, Emmalee created our manifesto. The source file was created in Adobe Illustrator, meaning it is a vector image, so we can make it as big or as small as we like with no pixelation. This makes it very versatile, so we can use our manifesto in many ways, both digitally and in print. If you don’t have a designer on staff, we recommend that you commission a freelance graphic designer to put your manifesto into a graphic. Fiverr.com is a great resource to find people that excel at this sort of work. Make sure to give your designer any brand guidelines as well as the information on the elements that need to be conveyed in your Manifesto.

A source file of the PFD Manifesto in Adobe Illustrator

Step 3: Repeat, repeat repeat.

The final step is to repeat your manifesto – everywhere. Get it printed and hang it in the office. Put it in your digital war room. Reference it at meetings. Repeat these foundational elements so often that your team is making fun of you – that’s how you know it’s starting to sink in.  At PFD, we begin every quarterly and annual offsite with our manifesto to remind the team of who we are and where we are going. Your team should know the core values, core purpose, and BHAG inside and out. What’s more, they should be able to take action to live them. Creating and repeating a manifesto is an incredibly grounding and empowering exercise for everyone, and we have found it to be transformational as we continue to navigate this uncertain world. While there is so much out of our control, we still have the power to decide the people we want to be and to take action to create a better future.

The manifesto is just the first step in creating resilient, growth-oriented business. We believe there is no better time than now to prepare ourselves for a better 2021. We would love to help you shape your future: one where you have the confidence and clarity to scale your business to create a better world around you.

If this mission is resonating with you, we would love to support you and your senior team. We would be happy to talk with you about your strategic plan for the upcoming year. Please reach out to us to schedule a call.