If you want to dramatically improve the results of your company or organization, you need to focus on both your culture and people. Chris Edmonds’ has been showing people exactly how to do this for over twenty years. He has now taken this knowledge and beautifully presented it to us in his latest book The Culture Engine.
I was riding around Stanley Park in Vancouver with my wife Karalee this weekend. We both stopped to take pictures of the Lions Gate Bridge spanning the entrance to Burrard Inlet. It reminded me of how fortunate we are to be able to live in and experience such a beautiful city.
I haven’t always had such deep appreciation for what I have. Seven years ago, I was unhappy in business and as it turns out in life. I hired extraordinary coach Kevin Lawrence who has helped me experience and live life and business in new ways. Looking back on our journey together, I see seven reasons why entrepreneurs need a coach.
I like to talk. Often I like to talk a lot. I was reflecting on this as our Sunday running group sat outside last weekend where two friends were respectfully listening to a third.
To truly communicate, you need to build your listening skills far more than your speaking ones. Cultivating great listening skills by focusing on:
Twenty years ago, Starbucks started expanding north into Canada and Vancouver was one of the first cities to see a proliferation of Starbucks stores. At the time, I was looking for a coffee store where there was skim milk (non fat milk for my non-Canadian friends) on the counter. I was tired of coffee shops where I had to constantly ask for cold skim milk for my coffee. Fortunately, Starbucks included skim milk on the counter in every single one of their stores. For me, this was the key differentiator that made me a Starbucks customer for the last 20 years.
The last two weeks, skim milk has been disappearing from Vancouver Starbucks stores. Every time I get a Starbucks coffee, which is usually more than once every day, I have to ask for skim milk so that I can add it to my coffee. When I do, a four litre jug is retrieved from the back and put on top of the counter for me to open and pour into my coffee. Not only has Starbucks taken away the key differentiator that made me become a customer in the first place, they make the experience of getting what I want unpleasant.
As I wrote in Pursing A Vision, great performing organizations learn how to set a vision and then motivate all leaders and employees to collaborate together to follow that vision. For many organizations, building trust, between leaders, between employees, and between each other is critical to becoming a high performing organization.