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.

Recommended Reading: September 2020

At PFD, we believe that continuing to grow and learn is paramount to being able to thrive as a leader. Continuing with our commitment to our business community to provide resources with best practices, for our September Reading List, we recommend these three books: Right Away & All at Once by Greg Brenneman, Personality Isn't Permanent by Benjamin Hardy PhD, and Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden. These books vary in subject matter, but they all have insights on how you can create the best version of yourself, which will liberate you to more effectively and meaningfully lead your business. 

Right Away & All at Once: Five Steps to Transform Your Business and Enrich Your Life - Greg Brenneman

At PFD, we believe that our businesses should support the lives that we want to live and the impact that we want to make on the world.

Greg Brenneman couldn’t agree more.

In this book, Brenneman writes on techniques that you can do to BOTH grow your business, AND live a rich, purposeful life. He takes his learnings from turning around growing many successful businesses, including Burger King and Continental airlines, to provide a clear roadmap on how to achieve business and personal success. Those steps include:

• Preparing a succinct “Go Forward” plan

• Building a fortress balance sheet

• Growing your sales and profits

• Choosing all-star servant leaders

• Empowering your team
   

  We found Brenneman’s holistic, proven approach to be a practical guide for any leader that has a higher calling for their business and life.

Personality Isn't Permanent: Break Free from Self-Limiting Beliefs and Rewrite Your Story - Benjamin Hardy

In this book, Dr. Benjamin Hardy uses his psychological expertise and research to completely redefine how we think about personality. He dismantles the idea that we have one “true” personality waiting to be discovered, and instead offers a more empowering, action-oriented approach. Personality, as offered by Hardy, is a result of how we can intentionally create our desired selves and achieve amazing goals

He offers science-based advice to for personal reflection, like how to design your current identity based on your desired future self, and how to become confident enough to define your own lives purpose.

At PFD, we believe that as leaders, when we are clear about the future we want to create for ourselves and others, we are then able to take the steps to live into that future. When we define what we want to create, who we want around us, and how we can be resilient in the face of uncertainty, we grow into the person we desire to be. We are actors in our own lives, and we think this book is an empowering and practical look at how we can strategically create the future we want for ourselves.
     

Procrastinate on Purpose: 5 Permissions to Multiply Your Time - Rory Vaden

We all have the same 168 hours in the week, Great leaders are able to use that time more effectively. In this book, Rory Vaden has shared his wisdom and actionable tips to multiply the time we have available.

Vaden creates a simple guide to set us free to do our best work, and overcome stalled productivity. This approach takes into account the emotional aspect of productivity and it gives us a clear path forward. Vaden’s model gives us five simple permissions so we can stop wasting time and energy and engage in our most worthwhile work:

   •  Eliminate
   •  Automate
   •  Delegate
   •  Consolidate
   •  Procrastinate (yes, you heard that right)

We at PFD recommend this to our readers to multiply our time so we can focus on doing meaningful work.

Recommended Reading: June 2020

At PFD, we genuinely believe that continuing to grow and learn is paramount to being able to thrive as a leader. Continuing with our commitment to our business community to provide resources with best practices, we have another book that we highly recommend:

Oversubscribed: How to Get People Lining Up to Do Business with You by Daniel Priestley.

Daniel Priestly’s Oversubscribed provides amazing insight into how to build a customer base that will line up to do business with you - even in a crowded marketplace. This book begins with detailed principles on how to become oversubscribed, and then it transitions into a campaign schedule that your team can follow to engage customers and build predictability. Next, it gives great tips on how to better your team in executing the campaigns - describing who needs to be on your team and the materials they need to be able to thrive. Finally, it closes by advocating that we use our campaigns and resources to better the world and fulfill a higher calling. There is incredible need in the world and our communities, and we need leaders to be able to execute specific plans of action to create tangible change. We at PFD have found this book to be immensely useful, and we will definitely be incorporating its best practices in how we operate our business.

3HAG Way & PFD Group Strategic Thinking & Execution Planning Workshop May 14th

Have you ever struggled with confidently crafting a differentiated strategy? One that the whole company understands and aligned to deliver? One that puts your company in a unique and valuable position now and in the future? One that you can clearly make great decisions today and looking out 3 years –12 quarters?

These burning questions and more are answered in Shannon Susko’s & Ethan Martin’s 3HAG Workshop taking place on May 14th, 2019 in Denver, CO. You will learn how to ‘Gut Out’, develop, and implement your 3HAG (3 Year Highly Achievable Goal) and build a detailed 12 quarter-over-quarter plan (your Swim-lanes) to provide a confident execution plan designed to keep you on track to meet or exceed your stretch goal. This workshop is designed for business owners and CEOs looking to refine and focus their strategies. By learning and practicing the 3HAG 12-step process, you will dig into the key areas of your strategy to create the confidence you need to grow your business.

Learn More Here