Sources of adrenaline are often hard to find. Getting your staff excited, and keeping them excited, is key for the future of your business. Don’t forget to have a laugh too. Meeting expectations is essential for business. In a world that is increasingly driven by aspirations avoiding disappointment or inflated egos is good for business.
Creating future plans for your business; designing and refining your business model, setting SMART goals then achieving them, will help you reach milestone in your company’s development. Business can be boring. It doesn’t always have to be.
Future Plans
If you are not excited about the future of your company, don’t expect your staff to be either. How to get excited about your company’s future depends on what you really want out of running your own business. If you would willingly stop work tomorrow, then you are going to have to fake it. Don’t worry, millions of people do. Better still, why not define then reposition your whole business philosophy? Then setting and communicating business goals effectively to your staff is your next step. Any organisation that doesn’t communicate effectively from the top down causes demotivation and mistrust in the workforce and will eventually lead to high staff turnover and even a crash. Don’t let it happen.
Employee motivation
Getting your staff motivated, and keeping them motivated is your leadership challenge. Excitement comes from different sources for different people. Remember, a lot of people are bored a lot of the time. You don’t have to be. Some people take part in certain activities just for the adrenaline rush. Activities that can cause an adrenaline rush include:
- watching an exciting movie, a thriller
- team building activities like white water rafting
- going to a comedy show
- office parties with talent shows
- freebies like weekend breaks
Feedback
If you are not pragmatic in business in Asia, you won’t be around very long. Getting feedback and giving feedback is vital. Employee testimonials are good for you and good for your business. In private, they give you guidance for readjusting your business strategy. In public, they give you PR material for recruitment, marketing and branding. Listen to what gets your staff excited, then keep reusing this strategic tool. If people go off the boil, try something new.
Flow
Excitement can come from anywhere in an employee’s hierarchy of needs. In positive psychology, ‘flow’ is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. Imagine if your whole office was in flow? How good would that feel? It’s possible. Anything is possible. Getting to flow involves imagination, vision, action and execution. Get going.
Painting the big picture for your staff
An organisation that is open at the top, consistently and persistently communicating your vision and mission, will inform all your staff of your business goals. By contrast, an organisation that is closed at the top breeds mistrust, demotivation and creates unhappiness.
When you have figured out some or most of what makes your employees tick you should be in a position to ‘push buttons’ and ‘pull levers’. These will get your staff going in the right direction towards your business goals. Now you can paint a strategy canvas that allows you to see the big picture. The big picture should always be a future vision of success for your company and your staff. An optimistic take on the next one to five years and even beyond.
Jeff Bezos continually shares his Day 1 philosophy with Amazon staff: “The place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. The outside world can push you into Day 2 if you won’t or can’t embrace powerful trends quickly. If you fight them, you’re probably fighting the future. Embrace them and you have a tailwind.”
Excited? You should be. Spice up your life. Spice up your business.
