Over the next twelve months, I will be producing a monthly four-part blog, entitled Conference Room. Producing content for forty-eight original blogs is quite an ambitious objective, but we all know not much gets achieved without setting lofty goals, and working towards them with diligence. Our Conference Room blog will run concurrently with two other series focused on the Geotechnical and Waterproofing construction industry segments. Through these blogs, we aim to provide our audience with an insight into not only the Alchemy-Spetec product line, but also the broader general industries as well as a behind-the-scenes snapshot of how we operate as an organization and how we prioritize our efforts. We welcome questions, comments, and criticisms throughout, and look forward to finding ways to improve through this dialogue. We hope you enjoy our blogs!
“Getting the right people in the right jobs is a lot more important than developing a strategy” – Jack Welch
You read it in every business culture book, and you hear it in every management meeting. Not only are people the most important dynamic to your business, good ones are extremely difficult to find. We all realize that nothing in the business goes well when good people aren’t putting in their well-respected efforts day in and day out. While this is certainly true inside each business, it is perhaps even more true outside of your business.
The same phenomenon occurs when we don’t have the right people as partners anywhere along our respective verticals, or anywhere in our lives for that matter. Do your suppliers share the same pillar principles? Are you aligned with your distribution network’s goals? As a supplier, do you share the same confidence in your product as the contractor has in their own skill and craftsmanship? If the answer to any of these are ‘no’, then you’re not aligning with the right people. In the often-quoted Best-Selling Book Good To Great, Jim Collins emphasizes the importance of first and foremost focusing on having the right people on the bus. Why should this be any different for all of those people that make your brand uniquely yours? Commitment to, and appreciation for finding the right people should be all of our #1 objectives.
Tis the season for reflection and new beginnings. Although you can’t throw someone off the bus who is sitting around your holiday dinner table, take some time to appreciate those around you who are the right people in your business and in your life. And as we begin the new year, critically and reflectively consider if you’re performing as the right person on each bus you ride. Next stop on this bus is Part 2 of 4; Partners. Be sure to stay tuned!