What does it mean to Ignite your Company? Why do you need to start doing it today?
Many great authors use fire to illustrate a wide range of ideas. Today, I would like to use it talk about attitude, passion, vision, and why it is so important to ignite your company.
I’m Elise with Woodworth Enterprises and we know that the key to innovation is asking thoughtful questions. Here is one for you today. Attitude is contagious… is your company’s worth catching?
Attitude
Whatever your attitude to your company or work it conveys to those you work with. It will become the shared attitude of your company and thus part of its culture. This is easily seen by customers and clients that then get the same attitude about your company. Here is another thoughtful question: Do you want your customers or clients to be passionate about your brand product or service? If you think of attitude like fire, it is contagious too.
Passion
Fire can represent many things, today let’s think of it as the expression of energy and that expression of energy as passion. Left unchecked, uncontained, fire can easily get out of control. Properly cared for, fire is an effective tool at accomplishing a variety of tasks.
If your company has passion for what it is doing, that is attractive to customers like moths to a flame.
So, if your company isn’t full of fire as the expression of energy or passion, what is it full of? When you can effectively channel that passion, that expression of energy, into a vision that you can share with your employees, great things can happen.
Vision
One of the many difficult tasks a business leader must undertake is that of setting and communicating the vision. This will concentrate the passion of the company on a future state. It will focus the expression of energy towards a successful outcome. Setting a vision can be difficult
When I coach someone through finding their personal vision, I tell them to start with what they don’t like. What are their fears and frustrations? You can do the same with a company. What fears and frustrations are your company trying to solve? By examining what is imperfect, the vision of the desired state can be more easily defined.
I frequently use this quote by Helen Keller (Helen Keller - Wikipedia),
“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”
Without vision, passion is wasted, energy is expressed in any number of directions that do not necessarily move one closer to the goal. And, in my opinion, attitude is irrelevant without that direction.
Importance
Just as fire needs three key elements. Fuel, oxygen, and an ignition source (or heat), igniting your company needs a few things too. Insight, Innovation, and Engagement are three elements that we like to focus on to ignite a company. These three elements fuel the culture of an organization to strive towards its vision, with passion, and the appropriate attitude needed for success.
If you aren’t fired up about your company, why would anyone else be?
If your organization’s culture is on fire with vision, passion, and attitude, and fueled by insight, innovation, and engagement than change, problems, obstacles, become quickly consumed, overcome and done away with by that fire. A problem, or pivot, is no longer considered a disruption or game changer, but a mere twig or some fresh wood ready to be converted into further expressions of energy focused at the continued realization of the vision, which is itself part of that which fuels the fire.
So, again I ask, is your company’s attitude worth catching?