The Sales Evangelist TSE 1186: Write Your Company’s Obituary: Identify or Rediscover Your Company’s Purpose
Write Your Company’s Obituary: Identify or Rediscover Your Company’s Purpose
Having to write your company’s obituary sounds a bit morbid but there’s a good reason why doing this is important. One result is that doing so will help you identify and rediscover your company’s purpose.
Josh Levine is a culture company strategist and works with technology, social enterprise organizations, and firms to help them improve their work. His goal is to make the employees love what they’re doing by building strong relationships, higher trust, and deeper engagement.
Josh published a book called Great Mondays: How to
Design a Company Culture That Employees Love. It talks about all his learnings for the past 10 years in advancing the idea of company culture as a strategic advantage. It defined what culture is and gives people the tools that they need to improve the culture.
Write your company’s obituary
This was a tool that Josh’s mentor used and many clients would react negatively upon hearing it. There is more to sales than just putting the product out there and selling it. It’s more than just the numbers. Doing business isn’t only about the money; it’s also about understanding what you are trying to do with your company and with your life.
This is also about knowing your own purpose and helping the organization discover its ‘why?’
Imagine that your business closes its doors after 30 years. Don’t think of the reason why it shut down. Your goal is to write down two or three short paragraphs about why your company will be remembered and will be most missed. This will give you the opportunity to see what you achieved that made the difference.
Josh’s team works with a board executive team and leadership peers together. They make teams write because what matters isn’t just the end result. They also consider the kind of language, the words, and the phrases used together.
Obituary exercise
Don’t stop short of the fantastic. When you start writing your company obituary, you need to go beyond how far you think you can make it.
Be bold about the things that you think your company can achieve. #Salessuccess
The point of the exercise is to come up with your achievements and look for the possible ways that you’re going to achieve those.
Josh had a client who said that they would solve poverty. It’s a far-fetched goal and impossible to do but it didn’t keep them from aiming to do so. When the discussion happened, the team thought of how to make it work and figured out that their technology connects communities together. The community that works together will solve poverty. With that, their previously written achievement of solving poverty now sounds plausible.
Define your purpose
Next, you have to define your purpose. The company’s values are the hows and the company’s purposes are the whys. Businesses and companies need to figure out the why behind what they’re doing. You won’t be able to find your purpose if you’re thinking about this quarter’s return or this quarter’s sales numbers.
As a sales leader, you can help define the purpose by shaping the culture of your company according to the company’s vision. You can help strengthen the team and find the values and purpose of the company over time.
Components of a company's culture
There are six components mentioned in the book Great Mondays. The first three are as follows:
- Purpose
- Values
- Behaviors
The first two define the company’s purpose and values. The third component is behaviors. Behavior is the center point of culture and is what you are trying to adjust to help people make better business decisions.
The next three are the following:
- Recognition
- Rituals
- Cues
Recognition and rewards have been used in businesses. These are effective strategies in aligning behaviors to build and strengthen the synapses of culture. Your goal is to spread your culture and share the behaviors.
Keep reminding your peers why they’re in the business and getting the people back to the top of the pyramid. Love what you and find something that you believe in to make everything worthwhile.
“Write Your Company’s Obituary” episode resources
Great Mondays: How to Design a Company Culture That Employees Love is available on Amazon. The purpose of the Write your company’s obituary exercise is laid out in the book.
You can download the supporting materials for free at free@greatmondays.com. You can also sign up for newsletters, one minute Monday, and case studies. We will e-mail you all the necessary information for building cultures that matter.
Connect with Josh Levine via Twitter and LinkedIn.
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Mentioned in this episode:
HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS
HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com