Is Your Business Doing Something Special? | Forbes Council Article

Here’s a little secret: Many people aspire to be part of something big and powerful, something they can be proud to talk about in the world. Growing their paychecks and making you richer are neither big nor powerful.

The standard, old-fashioned mindset is as such: “With growth will come more opportunity. Climb the proverbial ladder, make more money and maybe have the letters VP in front of your name someday.” But many people, including me, find this mindset distasteful.

Great leaders understand that once people have the basic necessities, many are not highly motivated by individual material considerations. They are highly motivated by showing up to work to do something special while supporting the communal growth and significance of their team. They feel connected and fulfilled when contributing to a group and enjoying the camaraderie associated with performance.

When you are gray and wise and the curtain calls, somebody will need to write a speech for your retirement party and will boil your contribution down to a couple of sentences. How will your professional obituary read? “Linda was outstanding at guiding her team; they hit many sales records over the years. She was a monumental contributor to the performance of the company.” In other words, Linda did a good job soldiering her people to make the shareholders rich. Inspiring, right?

Here is where you, as the leader, are critical. You must define “something special” through the arduous process of including as many voices as possible in the discussion. You will argue. You will be frustrated. Your people will teach you what is important to them. You must step away from your own needs and desires. This endeavor is about having an impact and improving our communities. If you are a Milton Friedman fan and you believe that the only thing an organization is supposed to do is maximize shareholder value, recall that Friedman’s doctrine is over 50 years old, and there are now far better approaches.

It took us over three years at Biggby Coffee to settle on our something special. If you want to build a world-class culture, there are no short cuts.

What is our answer? Glad you asked. “Biggby Coffee exists to support you in building a life you love.” Our vision is to improve workplace culture in America. Why is this important? The leading cause of death in the U.S. is chronic illness — heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc. It has been proven that stress is a contributor to chronic illness. One of the most significant causes of stress is work — but I’d say more specifically workplace culture. Therefore, the linear argument can be made that the leading cause of death in the U.S. is workplace culture. When you show up to work at Biggby Coffee, you are showing up to take on improving workplace culture in America. Is this a worthy cause? We think so.

What is your reason for being beyond profit? I hope you will share it. I look forward to learning about all the many ways that American corporations will contribute to the people and the planet.

Now that you have your reason for being, your something special, your purpose, you must next create a culture to make that something special happen. In order to know what kind of culture you are trying to create, you must first determine your values.

Putting them in place is one thing, but then making a Herculean effort to communicate them to your company is a critical component to getting culture dialed in. Everybody, including the leadership team, needs to know that these values are the bedrock of the organization — the standard to which everyone will be held accountable. Ours at Biggby Coffee are:

• Love unconditionally. Always.

• Be better. The constant pursuit of improvement.

• Live consciously. Be present, self-aware and mindful of others.

• Have courage. Explore, embrace and relentlessly challenge your fears.

• Be unabashedly world-class. Transcend every expectation.

Now that your values are set in stone, you must tackle step three: summer camp. Stick with me here. Ask people about the powerful moments in their childhood and get ready to be struck with a multitude of stories about summer camp or some version of such. Why? Because kids are up to something difficult and worthy of their full attention at summer camp. By being away from home, perhaps for the first extended time, they are becoming individuals within a group, and they are mastering things together.

This is the environment I think we need to create inside of our organizations — people working together in the face of a monumental task, finding your organization’s something special. We need to acknowledge that in order to accomplish what we need to accomplish; we all must be better than we are today. We need to create an environment that is genuine, and authentic, and rife with personal development, where we and our people alike can talk about our weaknesses, our struggles and the things we are working on. We need to work hard for each other and have the genuine conversations that occur between people who love and trust each other so we can improve as individuals and therefore improve as a group. Imagine the power of that organization.

So you want to create a powerful culture? It can be a long, arduous process. My company has been at it for over six years, and we have yet to find ourselves in an acceptable place. Getting our company to soar at unimaginable heights and to improve workplace culture in America is my obsession, and it is one of the primary reasons why I love my job.

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