ELEPHANT ALERT!
How much do you budget to maintain your company’s copying machines? Those machines are expensive buggers! Yet of course, without them it would be tough to do business, wouldn’t it?
How expensive is it to do business with a team that is not aligned and communicating well?
As you consider your budget for 2009, where and how you decide to spend your money will say a lot. And what some companies tell the world is shocking.
Here’s the elephant in the office: “More and more I realize how insane the old approach is,” shared an executive. “Some companies have training budgets smaller than the budgets for maintaining their copiers!”
What does it say about a company that spends their money on the equipment people use, but not the people who use the equipment? Imagine a new semi-truck barreling down the highway at 70 mph with a bunch of five-years-olds fighting over the wheel.
STOMP THE ELEPHANT
Focusing on how effectively people work together is the mother of all strategies.
A growing company in Colorado has a leadership team that tells the organization: “Watch where the money goes.” Do you suppose there’s a connection between the fact that this company has invested in the tools people can use to communicate and work together (culture) and that they are no longer in the red, but now on healthy financial ground?
“It is our people which separate us from our competition. It’d be crazy not to invest in our strategic competitive advantage.”
Any organization that rises to the upper tier has its moment in history when it realizes the statement “it’s not in our budget” really means “it’s not our priority.” So they set new priorities – and live their values even more.
Where will you lead – where will you stomp elephants – today?
