Lessons From The Best: What's Your Purpose?
As we prepare for the release of our new eBook Lead Where You Are which will be coming out right after the first of the year, we will be exploring how organizations rated as a Best Place to Work create dynamic, highly engaged workforces delivering sustained results by leveraging many of the concepts we highlight in the book.
Week 1 (Oct. 10) - Leading with Purpose
Week 2 (Oct. 17) - Leading Change
Week 3 (Oct. 24) - Leading Accountability
Week 4 (Oct. 30) - Leading Performance
What’s your purpose?
Organizations that are deemed ‘Best Place to Work’, ‘Most Admired’, ‘Best Companies to Work For’, and so on, invariably have a very defined and compelling purpose beyond just making a profit or completing tasks. Purpose provides a pathway to success and ensures alignment between the organization and the actions and behaviors of every employee. It cultivates commitment, not compliance. The purpose drives everything from recruiting, selection, advancement and “dehiring”, if necessary. Let’s see how some of the best are purpose-driven and purpose-led.
Netflix
Our core philosophy is people over process. More specifically, we have great people working together as a dream team. With this approach, we are a more flexible, fun, stimulating, creative, collaborative and successful organization.
What is special about Netflix, though, is how they:
1. Encourage independent decision-making by employees
2. Share information openly, broadly, and deliberately
3. Are extraordinarily candid with each other
4. Keep only our highly effective people
5. Avoid rules
HubSpot
“There’s this notion that to grow a business, you have to be ruthless. But we know there’s a better way to grow. One where what’s good for the bottom line is also good for customers. We believe businesses can grow with a conscience and succeed with a soul. Success is making those who believed in you look brilliant.”
Just a few statements from HubSpot’s Culture Code:
Culture is to recruiting as product is to marketing.
Solve For The Customer -- not just their happiness, but also their success.
Power is now gained by sharing knowledge, not hoarding it.
HubSpot has a no-door policy, where everyone has access to anyone in the company.
You shouldn’t penalize the many for the mistakes of the few.
Results should matter more than when or where they are produced.
Influence should be independent of hierarchy.
Great people want direction on where they’re going -- not directions on how to get there.
“Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.”
We’d rather be failing frequently than never trying.
As you can see from these two examples, purpose guides and everyone contributes. It is about unleashing talent and potential, taking personal and team accountability and seeing the possibly for change everywhere. Culture is a powerful competitive advantage, if cultivated and invested in.
Join us next week as we will explore some lessons from the best in cultivating an environment of change.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
