Recommended Reading: February 2021

As a part of our continued commitment to providing the best resources for leaders to better themselves and thrive, for our February Reading List, we recommend these three books: Good Company by Arthur Blank, Willpower Doesn't Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success by Benjamin Hardy, and Business Made Simple: 60 Days to Master Leadership, Sales, Marketing, Execution, Management, Personal Productivity and More by Donald Miller.

Good Company - Arthur Blank

The Home Depot cofounder and owner of the NFL's Atlanta Falcons and MLS's Atlanta United shares a vision and a roadmap for values-based business.

Arthur M. Blank believes that for good companies, purpose and profit can-and should-go hand in hand. And he should know. Together with cofounder Bernie Marcus, Blank built The Home Depot from an idea and a dream to a $50 billion-dollar company, the leading home improvement retailer in the world. And even while opening a new store every 42 hours, they never lost sight of their commitment to care for their people and communities. In fact, in 2001, The Home Depot was voted America's most socially responsible company.

Blank left The Home Depot that same year with a burning question: Could the values and culture that made that company great be replicated? Good Company takes readers inside the story of how he did just that-turning around a struggling NFL team, rebooting a near-bankrupt retail chain, building a brand-new stadium, revitalizing a blighted neighborhood, launching a startup soccer club, and more.

"When good companies put the wellbeing of their customers, their associates, and their communities first, financial success will follow," Blank writes. "The entrepreneurs and business leaders of today and tomorrow have an extraordinary opportunity: to prove that through upholding values we can create value-for the company, for the customer, and for the community."

Willpower Doesn't Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success - Benjamin P. Hardy

We rely on willpower to create change in our lives...but what if we're thinking about it all wrong? In Willpower Doesn't Work, Benjamin Hardy explains that willpower is nothing more than a dangerous fad-one that is bound to lead to failure. Instead of "white-knuckling" your way to change, you need to instead alter your surroundings to support your goals. This book shows you how.
The world around us is fast-paced, confusing, and full of distractions. It's easy to lose focus on what you want to achieve, and your willpower won't last long if your environment is in conflict with your goals--eventually, the environment will win out. Willpower Doesn't Work is the needed guided for today's over-stimulating and addicting environment. Willpower Doesn't Work will specifically teach you:

• How to make the biggest decisions of your life--and why those decisions must be made in specific settings

• How to create a daily "sacred" environment to live your life with intention, and not get sucked into the cultural addictions

• How to invest big in yourself to upgrade your environment and mindset

• How to put "forcing functions" in your life--so your default behaviors are precisely what you want them to be

• How to quickly put yourself in proximity to the most successful people in the world--and how to adapt their knowledge and skills to yourself even quicker

• How to create an environment where endless creativity and boundless productivity is the norm

  
  Benjamin Hardy will show you that nurture is far more powerful than your nature, and teach you how to create and control your environment so your environment will not create and control you.

Business Made Simple: 60 Days to Master Leadership, Sales, Marketing, Execution, Management, Personal Productivity and More - Donald Miller

Is this blue book more valuable than a business degree?

Most people enter their professional careers not understanding how to grow a business. At times, this makes them feel lost, or worse, like a fraud pretending to know what they’re doing.

It’s hard to be successful without a clear understanding of how business works. These 60 daily readings are crucial for any professional or business owner who wants to take their career to the next level.

New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, Donald Miller knows that business is more than just a good idea made profitable – it’s a system of unspoken rules, rarely taught by MBA schools. If you are attempting to profitably grow your business or career, you need elite business knowledge—knowledge that creates tangible value.

Even if you had the time, access, or money to attend a Top 20 business school, you would still be missing the practical knowledge that propels the best and brightest forward. However, there is another way to achieve this insider skill development, which can both drastically improve your career earnings and the satisfaction of achieving your goals.

Donald Miller learned how to rise to the top using the principles he shares in this book. He wrote Business Made Simple to teach others what it takes to grow your career and create a company that is healthy and profitable.

These short, daily entries and accompanying videos will add enormous value to your business and the organization you work for. In this sixty-day guide, readers will be introduced to the nine areas where truly successful leaders and their businesses excel:

• Character: What kind of person succeeds in business?

• Leadership: How do you unite a team around a mission?

• Personal Productivity: How can you get more done in less time?

• Messaging: Why aren’t customers paying more attention?

• Marketing: How do I build a sales funnel?

• Business Strategy: How does a business really work?

• Execution: How can we get things done?

• Sales: How do I close more sales?

• Management: What does a good manager do?

Business Made Simple is the must-have guide for anyone who feels lost or overwhelmed by the modern business climate, even if they attended business school. Learn what the most successful business leaders have known for years through the simple but effective secrets shared in these pages.

Take things further: If you want to be worth more as a business professional, read each daily entry and follow along with the free videos that will be sent to you after you buy the book.

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?

3 Reasons Why Accountability is a Game Changer in Building a Healthy Culture

We can all agree that accountability is an important factor in business.

Although most of us can agree with this statement, it is easy to deem the subject of accountability as something you will tackle when you have more time. Creating a culture of accountability does take work and commitment, but if done correctly, will provide endless benefits to your company and your people. At PFD, we want to help you succeed and would like to share how accountability is linked to a thriving business and workplace environment.

you attract “A” Players

Many leaders may find it hard to hold their peers accountable for fear that it will upset them. While it may feel like you are being someone’s friend by not holding them accountable, this is only harming the individual and the organization at a larger level. Not holding people accountable insinuates that you do not have any expectations for them. “A” Players want to have clear expectations, to be challenged, and to be held accountable. 

Keep in mind that “A” Players crave a culture of accountability, while “B” & “C” Players are often repelled by it because it does not give them a platform to underperform while going unnoticed. Overtime, accountability can become a flywheel for attracting “A” Players and repelling the “B” & “C” Players.

This is one of the single most important things you can do for your business because a great business can only be built with great people.

Your processes are more effective

A business could have some of the best processes out there, but if they do not have a key person accountable for each function, their processes become irrelevant. If a new process is introduced without clear roles of accountability, it becomes hard for the employees to know where they should focus their efforts. Not only do processes need to have people responsible for the various functions, but they also need to hold these people accountable. Once this is done, employees know their roles and responsibilities and can better focus their efforts to meet the expectations provided for them.

more freedom for everyone in the company, including you!

When done right, accountability will create more time for you, your leadership team, and all employees. When a culture of accountability is established, less time is spent micromanaging. This gives the management team more freedom to work on their tasks, and the lower level employees more freedom to complete their tasks in the most efficient way possible. As a result of this, the leadership team will spend less time worrying if deliverables have been completed and have more freedom to work on strategy and the vision for the company.

Accountability starts with you. 

Leaders set examples for their peers. In order to create a positive culture of accountability, you need to hold yourself and your peers accountable first. Overtime, this will create a ripple effect. A culture of accountability will emerge, holding a place for A players to thrive and contribute to the success of your company. 

At PFD, we cannot stress the importance of accountability enough. We highly recommend Metronome Growth Systems to help drive accountability, transparency, behavior, and alignment in your company. For extra clarity on functions within your business, we recommend taking your team through the Function Accountability Chart.

Remember accountability starts with you. Although it is important, it does not mean it is easy. Great things take work! We love helping companies build cultures where all employees are thriving; Accountability is one factor among many others that can help to create a healthy culture where both employees and the company thrive.

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. 

Recommended Reading: January 2021

As a part of our continued commitment to providing the best resources for leaders to better themselves and thrive, for our January Reading List, we recommend these three books: The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company by Robert Iger, No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings, and Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity by Scott Galloway.

The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company - Robert Iger

Robert Iger became CEO of The Walt Disney Company in 2005, during a difficult time. Competition was more intense than ever and technology was changing faster than at any time in the company’s history. His vision came down to three clear ideas: Recommit to the concept that quality matters, embrace technology instead of fighting it, and think bigger—think global—and turn Disney into a stronger brand in international markets.

Today, Disney is the largest, most admired media company in the world, counting Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox among its properties. Its value is nearly five times what it was when Iger took over, and he is recognized as one of the most innovative and successful CEOs of our era.

In The Ride of a Lifetime, Robert Iger shares the lessons he learned while running Disney and leading its 220,000-plus employees, and he explores the principles that are necessary for true leadership, including:

• Optimism. Even in the face of difficulty, an optimistic leader will find the path toward the best possible outcome and focus on that, rather than give in to pessimism and blaming.

• Courage. Leaders have to be willing to take risks and place big bets. Fear of failure destroys creativity.

• Decisiveness. All decisions, no matter how difficult, can be made on a timely basis. Indecisiveness is both wasteful and destructive to morale.

• Fairness. Treat people decently, with empathy, and be accessible to them.

This book is about the relentless curiosity that has driven Iger for forty-five years, since the day he started as the lowliest studio grunt at ABC. It’s also about thoughtfulness and respect, and a decency-over-dollars approach that has become the bedrock of every project and partnership Iger pursues, from a deep friendship with Steve Jobs in his final years to an abiding love of the Star Wars mythology.

“The ideas in this book strike me as universal” Iger writes. “Not just to the aspiring CEOs of the world, but to anyone wanting to feel less fearful, more confidently themselves, as they navigate their professional and even personal lives.”

No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention - Reed Hastings

Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings reveals for the first time the unorthodox culture behind one of the world's most innovative, imaginative, and successful companies

There has never before been a company like Netflix. It has led nothing short of a revolution in the entertainment industries, generating billions of dollars in annual revenue while capturing the imaginations of hundreds of millions of people in over 190 countries. But to reach these great heights, Netflix, which launched in 1998 as an online DVD rental service, has had to reinvent itself over and over again. This type of unprecedented flexibility would have been impossible without the counterintuitive and radical management principles that cofounder Reed Hastings established from the very beginning. Hastings rejected the conventional wisdom under which other companies operate and defied tradition to instead build a culture focused on freedom and responsibility, one that has allowed Netflix to adapt and innovate as the needs of its members and the world have simultaneously transformed.

Hastings set new standards, valuing people over process, emphasizing innovation over efficiency, and giving employees context, not controls. At Netflix, there are no vacation or expense policies. At Netflix, adequate performance gets a generous severance, and hard work is irrel­evant. At Netflix, you don’t try to please your boss, you give candid feedback instead. At Netflix, employees don’t need approval, and the company pays top of market. When Hastings and his team first devised these unorthodox principles, the implications were unknown and untested. But in just a short period, their methods led to unparalleled speed and boldness, as Netflix quickly became one of the most loved brands in the world.

Here for the first time, Hastings and Erin Meyer, bestselling author of The Culture Map and one of the world’s most influential business thinkers, dive deep into the controversial ideologies at the heart of the Netflix psyche, which have generated results that are the envy of the business world. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with current and past Netflix employees from around the globe and never-before-told stories of trial and error from Hastings’s own career, No Rules Rules is the fascinating and untold account of the philosophy behind one of the world’s most innovative, imaginative, and successful companies.

Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity - Scott Galloway

From bestselling author and NYU Business School professor Scott Galloway comes a keenly insightful, urgent analysis of who stands to win and who's at risk to lose in a post-pandemic world.

The COVID-19 outbreak has turned bedrooms into offices, pitted young against old, and widened the gaps between rich and poor, red and blue, the mask wearers and the mask haters. Some businesses--like home exercise company Peloton, video conference software maker Zoom, and Amazon--woke up to find themselves crushed under an avalanche of consumer demand. Others--like the restaurant, travel, hospitality, and live entertainment industries--scrambled to escape obliteration.

But as New York Times bestselling author Scott Galloway argues, the pandemic has not been a change agent so much as an accelerant of trends already well underway. In Post Corona, he outlines the contours of the crisis and the opportunities that lie ahead. Some businesses, like the powerful tech monopolies, will thrive as a result of the disruption. Other industries, like higher education, will struggle to maintain a value proposition that no longer makes sense when we can't stand shoulder to shoulder. And the pandemic has accelerated deeper trends in government and society, exposing a widening gap between our vision of America as a land of opportunity, and the troubling realities of our declining wellbeing.

Combining his signature humor and brash style with sharp business insights and the occasional dose of righteous anger, Galloway offers both warning and hope in equal measure. As he writes, "Our commonwealth didn't just happen, it was shaped. We chose this path--no trend is permanent and can't be made worse or corrected."

The Top 5 Things We Learned In 2020

In a year where we have been challenged greatly, we need to remember that we have grown and adapted immensely, and we can take the lessons we learned into the future. So, we would like to share with you our five biggest takeaways from 2020.

We need to take care of ourselves

While this sounds obvious at first, when we face hardships in our lives our self-care is the first thing to be removed from our day-to-day activities. Rather than replenish our energy with rest and activities that give us energy, we tend to spend longer and longer hours working, effectively burning the candle from both ends. In a year where we have faced prolonged hardship and challenges, taking time to rest and recharge can be a much more effective strategy to be able to bring our best selves to our profession. This can look like seeking self-care resources, creating a self-care oriented morning routine, getting outside, or blocking out days in our schedule where we completely unplug from work.

We need to prioritize learning

In an environment where everything is consistently changing, our growth and learning is paramount to our being able to adapt and thrive. At PFD, we believe that all of the knowledge we could need already exists - it is our job to find it. So, we prioritize reading books and articles, and attending webinars and events to better ourselves.

It’s all about Great People

In an environment that is so extraordinarily challenging, we need amazing people on our teams that fit our cultures to drive our growth. We have found that, when our environmental pressure is increased, having people on our team that are B or C players or don’t share our core values is incredibly damaging. On the other side, having the right people in the right roles can be transformational to our resilience and health. We need to be consistently recruiting and promoting our team to make sure we have the right people to handle the challenges and opportunities that we come across.

We need to support great leaders in driving change

In 2020, there were many hardships we faced that were exacerbated by a lack of great leadership. For example, this pandemic has worsened widening wealth gaps in the United States, the impacts of which will be felt decades to come. This adds challenges and hardships to an already heartbreaking situation. If there was anything that this pandemic has taught us, it is that we need great, visionary leaders that will drive us into a more just and optimistic future. At PFD, we believe it is our job to support diverse leaders to drive this change. Our community is very important, we’re genuinely better together. When we invest in leadership and community, we can create a team of teams and tackle complex issues that span the globe.

Our outlook is everything

When we can’t control much in our environment, we must focus on what we can control - our attitude. It was so easy to get discouraged this year and give up, or let ourselves become passive. The real strength comes in looking at the brutal facts of our situations, and believing wholeheartedly that we will make it through. It is finding reasons to be grateful when our circumstances offer little to be grateful for. It is knowing that disruption brings opportunities, and diving into those opportunities head-first. It is deciding to be a positive force in the lives of our teams and communities, even when positivity is scarce. Our attitude shapes our ability to wholeheartedly impact those around us when they need it most, so we need to have the best attitude we possibly can.

Thank you, 2020. You were tough, but you taught us these valuable lessons that will help us to become better people and leaders for the rest of our lives.

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.

New Day: The Importance of Creating Space and Routine Each Morning.

We have all heard the adage, “New Year, New me”. The idea that with the new year will bring forth prosperity and an renewed sense of self is not new – in fact, it dates back to 4000 BC in ancient Babylon, where the Babylonians would make resolutions for the year in a religious ceremony preceding the planting of crops. This tradition was present in other parts of the world throughout history – as a similar practice was used in Ancient Rome and with Early Christians. Today, the idea of New Year’s Resolutions is commonplace, especially in the United States, as it is estimated that 45% of Americans make them.  

At PFD, we believe in New Year’s resolutions. In fact, it’s our job help leaders and entrepreneurs set and reach meaningful 1-Year Highly Achievable Goals (1HAGs)  so that they can make progress on their Big Hairy Audacious Goal and scale their businesses. While New Year’s Resolutions are genuinely helpful, today, I would like to focus on a much smaller period of time: the new day. At the beginning of the New Year, those who make resolutions begin with excitement and tenacity for what they can accomplish, but these feelings tend to fade rather quickly. Rather than try to sustain these feelings for a year, what if we started out each day with a similar optimism and excitement? What if we intentionally took time out of our day each morning to create a positive mindset that sets the tone for the rest of our day?

“ “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

For anyone who knows me, they know I am a morning person, so I might sound biased when I say mornings are an incredible and magical time of day. On the best days, I will get up around 4:00 AM to pray, journal, meditate, work out, and prepare for my day. When I take the time to do these things, I find that my days are exponentially better. On these days, I have more energy, I feel more centered, I plan my day better, and I am more productive. Studies show that getting up in the morning has been linked to better stability, increased proactivity, and lower rates of depression. As we end this year of innumerable challenges, we need to give ourselves a fighting chance against the stressors in our lives. The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a mental health crisis in America, and we need to be proactive in reintroducing a sense of normalcy and routine in the ways we have control. Our mornings are a great place to start.

Recently, I have read Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs, and it has reinforced my firm belief in the power of routine and the mornings. The author, Hal Elrod, recommends a six-step process to implement in a morning routine – captured in the acronym S.A.V.E.R.S.

This acronym stands for:

Silence – This is the first part of the morning that is dedicated to mindfulness. As business leaders, we can often find ourselves guilty of checking our texts and emails as soon as we turn off the alarm. Experts suggest that starting your day this way actually impedes your ability to focus throughout the day and makes you more prone to distraction. Instead, take some moments to be silent – use this time to meditate, pray, reflect, etc. This will set you up to be more productive and less stressed throughout the day. During this time of prolonged stress, reducing cortisol levels is going to be paramount to your health and wellness.

Affirmations – This step is critical to reshaping your mindset. As leaders, it can be extraordinarily challenging to maintain confidence and faith in yourself and your business, especially when we have been hit with so many unforeseeable circumstances in the past year. When we take the time to recite the goals we are committed to, as well as understand wholly that we can become the type of people to achieve those goals, the results are astounding.

Visualization – In this step, leaders should take the time to picture a compelling image of the future, and what it would look like to live out of this reality. This will give us clarity and motivation to reach this future in actuality. 

Exercise – Exercising in the morning is paramount to living a healthier life and setting the tone for a positive day. Even if you would rather do a larger work out later in the day, even a short work out in the morning could be beneficial. This has been linked to increased energy throughout the day, as well as improved nutrient uptake.  

Reading – As business leaders, we should be consistently learning to be able to improve ourselves and our organizations. So many problems we face have already been solved – we just need to find it. Devoting 15 – 30 minutes to reading in the morning can help us to learn faster so we can more effectively scale our businesses. Not sure what book to start with? Check out our monthly reading lists here.

Scribing – In other words, write. In this part, journal your thoughts for 5-10 minutes. It can be something that’s been on your mind or reflection on what you just learned. This will help you gain clarity that will carry throughout the day. In addition, you could try your gratefulness practice (write 5 things you are grateful for each day) to help reframe your mind to be more positive.

After this brilliant morning routine from Hal, my best days also include a workday startup routine. This helps me to refocus on the most important things I need to accomplish in a day so I can make the most out of my day.

This routine includes:

1.     Reviewing my preparation for the morning stand-up meeting. I will do my prep work at the end of the day before, so it usually takes a quick glance to remind myself of what I need to bring to the discussion.

2.     Writing down my tasks and my schedule for the day in my planner. After this, I choose my top three priorities for the day, ensuring that these priorities are critical, align with the metrics for which I am responsible, or will help me to make progress on my quarterly goals.

3.     Meeting with my team for the daily stand-up.

4.     Emptying my email box.

After this routine, I am caught up and prepared to embark on the day. While there is so much that is out of our control right now, it is vital that we have healthy, productive morning routines as it will drastically improve our lives.

The New Year is a chance to start fresh, as it is a time where we have energy and drive to make possible our aspirations. We can apply that same energy to each new day by implementing healthy routines that foster growth, self-improvement, health, and focus. 

Some Suggestions –

1.     Read Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod.  He goes much more into depth about how you can optimize your morning to be productive.

2.     Write down your workplace start-up routine – no more than 10 tasks that will help you feel equipped and prepared to take on the day.

3.      Schedule your morning. You don’t have to wake up at 4:00 am like me, but understanding and committing to doing different tasks at certain times will improve your intentionality with your morning.

Recommended Reading: December 2020

As a part of our continued commitment to providing the best resources for leaders to better themselves and thrive, for our December Reading List, we recommend these three books: BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company by Jim Collins and Bill Lazier, Excellence Wins: A No-Nonsense Guide to Becoming the Best in a World of Compromise by Horst Schulze, and The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. These books provide perspectives about business excellence from extraordinarily successful thought leaders and entrepreneurs.

BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company - Jim Collins & Bill Lazier

What's the roadmap to create a company that not only survives its infancy but thrives, changing the world for decades to come?

Nine years before the publication of his epochal bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins and his mentor, Bill Lazier, answered this question in their bestselling book, Beyond Entrepreneurship.

Beyond Entrepreneurship left a definitive mark on the business community, influencing the young pioneers who were, at that time, creating the technology revolution that was birthing in Silicon Valley. Decades later, successive generations of entrepreneurs still turn to the strategies outlined in Beyond Entrepreneurship to answer the most pressing business questions.

BE 2.0 is a new and improved version of the book that Jim Collins and Bill Lazier wrote years ago. In BE 2.0, Jim Collins honors his mentor, Bill Lazier, who passed away in 2005, and reexamines the original text of Beyond Entrepreneurship with his 2020 perspective.

The book includes the original text of Beyond Entrepreneurship, as well as four new chapters and fifteen new essays. BE 2.0 pulls together the key concepts across Collins' thirty years of research into one integrated framework called The Map. The result is a singular reading experience, which presents a unified vision of company creation that will fascinate not only Jim's millions of dedicated readers worldwide, but also introduce a new generation to his remarkable work.

Excellence Wins: A No-Nonsense Guide to Becoming the Best in a World of Compromise - Horst Schulze

CEOs. Leaders without titles. Startups. Corporations. For-profits. Nonprofits. It doesn't matter who you are or what you do - you want to become the best. You want to win, every time.

Horst Schulze knows how to win. In Excellence Wins, Schulze, in his absolute no-nonsense approach, shares the visionary and disruptive principles that have produced immense global successes over the course of his still-prolific fifty-year career.

As the co-founder and former president of Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co., Schulze fearlessly led the company to unprecedented multi-billion dollar growth, setting the business vision and people-focused standards that made the Ritz-Carlton brand globally elite.

Schulze's principles are both versatile and utterly practical to leaders of every age, career stage, and industry. You don't need a powerful title or a line of direct reports - you have everything you need to use them right now. If you're searching for the blueprint to beating the competition and out-performing everyone around you, look no further than Excellence Wins. Schulze pulls no punches as a masterful guide to becoming the very best in a world of routine compromise. Unleash the disruptive power of your true potential, own your career trajectory, and experience the game-changing proof firsthand: Excellence Wins.

The Infinite Game - Simon Sinek

From the New York Times bestselling author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last, a bold framework for leadership in today’s ever-changing world.

How do we win a game that has no end? Finite games, like football or chess, have known players, fixed rules and a clear endpoint. The winners and losers are easily identified. Infinite games, games with no finish line, like business or politics, or life itself, have players who come and go. The rules of an infinite game are changeable while infinite games have no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers—only ahead and behind.
The question is, how do we play to succeed in the game we’re in?
In this revelatory new book, Simon Sinek offers a framework for leading with an infinite mindset. On one hand, none of us can resist the fleeting thrills of a promotion earned or a tournament won, yet these rewards fade quickly. In pursuit of a Just Cause, we will commit to a vision of a future world so appealing that we will build it week after week, month after month, year after year. Although we do not know the exact form this world will take, working toward it gives our work and our life meaning.
Leaders who embrace an infinite mindset build stronger, more innovative, more inspiring organizations. Ultimately, they are the ones who lead us into the future.

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.