Episode #9 of Leading Matters features business performance expert and keynote speaker Ryan Estis.  Estis shares insight about how to simply align your workforce against your values and purpose.  A move that will unlock the capability and contribution inside each employee.

I had the good fortune of seeing Ryan Estis speak at the Bullhorn Engage conference in Boston early in June.  After his speaking slot he was gracious enough to stay and talk to any of the attendees that had questions.  I took the opportunity to invite him on to Leading Matters as my guest and he thankfully agreed. 

And you know what, after you give this episode of Leading Matters a listen you’ll be glad that Ryan Estis agreed to the interview as well.   In fact I dare you not to get a little bit of actionable value out of these 25 minutes. 

HIGHLIGHTS 

On The Necessity of Having a Clear Mission and Purpose

Ryan states what many of us, as business leaders, already know but sometimes have a hard time breaking free of; Maximizing shareholder value is probably not the most motivating mission for a large majority (if not 100%) of our workforce. 

As the complexity of the market landscape and media channels over which we communicate continues to increase, establishing the fundamentals of mission and purpose are even more critical for effective leadership.

Teams not aligned to mission, purpose and values struggle.  Teams that are aligned to mission, purpose and values dominate.

On Developing our Mission, Purpose and Values and Making them Accessible

It is almost impossible to consciously develop and enable purpose or mission without buy in from the top.   

The largest impact on mission, purpose and values is who we decide to hire, who gets rewarded, who gets promoted and who gets let go.  If we are not connecting our culture to how we manage people and performance there is going to be a disconnect. 

Simplicity is critical to ensure action, the objective of our communication must be to enable action through simplicity.

To ensure that change happens we must pick out manageable chunks of meaningful activity.  A Take Action Now, or TAN, plan.  Ryan approaches his keynote addresses from this perspective, giving his audience fodder to develop an actionable plan to implement ideas that he shares with them.

On Employee Engagement

Empowerment and autonomy are a valuable benefit to most employees today.

There is a trust crisis in business leadership that minimizes the amount of autonomy that we afford our employees.

We must foster a culture of continuous learning and demonstrate to the individual that the organization will re-invest in them and in their career development.

We cannot underestimate the importance of frequent and accessible communication.

Links Mentioned

Pouring Happiness
Is Customer Love Fueling Your Organization [blog post about Bullhorn culture example]