To quote Simon Sinek: All companies know what they deliver, some know how they deliver it, and a few know why. Whether you are just starting your business, trying to grow your SMB, or leading a large enterprise, there are some basics you need to know to ensure you stay on track to become (more) successful.
The Company Compass presents a good set of basics. It helps you build your company’s identity and strategy and translate that into a compelling story that attracts the right employees, customers, and stakeholders.
Creating your Company Compass.
Before you choose your strategy, you must define what your company stands for. Who are we? What is our vision? What are our core values? What is our innovative power? Luckily, there are enough tools out there to help you create a 360-degree view of your company’s identity.
My favourite tools are:
Simon Sinek’s:
- Why-How-What
Mike Michalowicz (The Pumpkin Plan)
- Immutable laws
- Area of Innovation
- Disruptive Power
Together, they form your company’s compass.
And for those who think, there we go again, creating a lengthy document or just another toy for marketing, you could not be more wrong. When done right, it becomes a one-page Compass that management and employees use in their day-to-day work to make the right decisions.
Assumptions are the mother of all f*ck ups.
Another possible excuse for not creating your company compass is that we, as management, already know our compass, so there is no need to spend time and money on writing it down. However, there are two significant reasons why you should write it down.
The first reason is the assumption that the management team already has this shared compass. You know what they say about assumption. They are the mother of all f*ck ups. Please don’t assume; make sure by writing it down.
Commitment is critical for success.
The second reason comes from the power of commitment. Studies have revealed that the best way to have people stick to their beliefs and values is to have people write them down and then communicate them to their peers. There is another element that has an even more significant impact: the effort people have put into it. Creating a company compass that is comprehensive but still compact and uses language everybody understands is a process that goes back and forth and requires you to make choices. All are things that require a large amount of thinking effort. The more effort people put into reaching an outcome, the more committed they are to it. The same goes for your company’s compass.
Helping you in your day-to-day work.
I give you two examples of how your company’s compass helps you in your day-to-day work:
- You have decided that your area of innovation is convenience, so you do everything you can to make it as easy as possible for your customers to buy, implement, use, and pay for your services. When developing a new service, you can choose two technology providers. However, number 1 is significantly cheaper. You select number two as they make life much easier for your customers. If you were to try to make number 1 as easy as number 2, it would take too much time and money, diminishing the fact that they are the cheapest.
- The same goes for your buy-and-build strategy. When buying a company, you look at how easily they make things for their customers, and when that’s different from your standards, you describe what is needed to bring it up to standard.
It doesn’t stop here.
With your company compass in place, you have a clear vision, strategy, company identity, ethics, and core values. Now, it is time to embed this into your company by creating that winning culture that enables you to focus on and excel in the things that matter. You, as management, are driving it, and you need to infuse your company identity into what you do. Otherwise, it won’t work. Advance that behaviour in your company, promote the people who get it and hire people with the right attitude. Describe your perfect employee and go find them.
If you create a culture where people love coming to work and are moving in the same direction, you will land where you set your heights.
Used at all departments
Make sure you translate your company compass to all departments. Your marketing department will love it, as it gives them the perfect guide for their branding and content creation, but other departments might need more help understanding what is required of them.
Free Step-by-step guide
Have I got you excited about introducing the company compass into your organisation and are wondering how to start? Just send me a message or invite. I will send you a 5-step implementation plan for free.
The origin of the Company Compass
You might wonder how and why I came up with the Company compass. My first encounter with Simon Sinek’s Why-How-What was when I was working for a Managed Service Provider that was searching for its identity. As a Management team, we went through a lengthy process facilitated by an agency to determine our Why-How-What.
Having to manage an extensive portfolio of services extending rapidly with the takeover of many smaller MSPs, the Why-How-What provided me clear guidance in defining my product vision and helped me make tough decisions. It also crafted my famous line: Good Idea, not going to do it. (As it’s not in line with…)
Later, when starting my company, OVRLY, I felt the Why-How-What needed to be augmented with additional elements. Elements I found when reading the book The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz. And so the Company Compass was born.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me on LinkedIn. I’ll be more than happy to share the Five-step plan with you.