Who is really on the bus within your business?

Who is really on the bus in your business?

What makes your business great? This is a question that as entrepreneurs and leaders, we must ask for ourselves regularly. If you haven’t read it, we highly recommend Jim Collin’s book ‘Good to Great’ which explores and encourages us to transform our business through building and developing our knowledge, experience and communication as a leader. Collins describes our abilities to direct and lead a business as being similar to driving a bus – we all need to be clear on who is on the bus, how to drive the bus and most importantly where to drive the bus to in order to reach the destination (goals) that have been set.

Who is on the Bus?

In the book Collins discusses how we can ignite the transformation of our businesses by not just focusing on the business itself but by first evaluating who has a seat on the bus which must be decided by you as the owner and driver. In order to adapt to an ever-changing world, we need to fill the bus with highly-qualified, adaptable employees that demonstrate the skillset and qualities found in people that can accelerate a business to its full potential. One of the ways that we have found to ensure that this happens is to make sure that recruitment focuses heavily on cultural fit rather than just skills and experience as it is easy to train someone with the right attitude how you want them to operate within your business, but it is nearly impossible to turn around a poor attitude and lack of alignment with your business values.

To quote Jim Collins - “If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we’ll figure out how to take it someplace great.”

Collins discusses how, as leaders, we need to focus on establishing a group of people that are self-motivated and don’t need to be micromanaged in order to drive the business forward. Once this is in place, you can run your business autonomously and have a culture of continuous progress without the need to constantly be directing the route to growth.

Driving the Bus Forward

As leaders we are all focused on driving our businesses forward with strong initiative. We direct and delegate making decisions to the person best placed to do so, we are constantly tweaking and changing the route based on conditions in the market place and we are aware of everything around us, internal and external to the business but we’re not always aware of where we are going or maybe we have lost sight of where we are going (the end goal).

Essentially driving our businesses forward is like driving a bus where we ourselves are the drivers and therefore we need to make sure we know how to drive the bus and then keep checking that we are driving it consistently and in the right direction.

Our potential to be great is found through our ability to lead with a sense of direction and confidence, in our business and in the wider community. You can read more here: What sort of Leader are you? on how you can be a better leader through your leadership style and which leadership styles make us competent leaders of a successful business. Essentially driving our business forward is about continually growing our own mindset and leadership while maintaining integrity, a vision and agility which we all must adopt.

A great example of this is the Founder of the dating app Bumble, Whitney Wolfe, who after facing friction over sexual assault claims at Tinder started Bumble, a female-owned business with a majority female workforce that has a culture encompassing equality in an effort to re-define gender roles. Wolfe is a great representation of driving the Bumble Bus with a clear focus and all the seats being filled by people who completely understand the direction of travel and share her passion for the destination.

Driving with Momentum

Transforming your business doesn't happen through one pathway, one decision or even one change. As a business owner we all have to get comfortable with the ambiguity of the route while at the same time maintaining the clarity of the destination and what is driving you to get there.

Transformation happens through a multitude of changes, paths and choices and when made as a collective, this is what drives the bus forward to reaching its desired position in the market and the wider business community. To grow from ‘good to great’ we must amplify these motions with a collective ‘push’. Buses aren't small and the bigger your business becomes, the bigger your bus is. That means more space, more seats, more people and therefore will need more momentum. We can establish this momentum by cultivating a strong culture, vision, mission and setting clear goals within our individual organisations

Systems within our business can be built surrounding the idea that the passengers, alongside the driver, is what gives the bus this momentum. You need to build systems and processes that value the employees and embed a company culture that hyper-focuses on the employees. This is what brings the right people on the bus and keeps them there throughout the journey to success.

So are you clear what your bus looks like, where it is going and what seats you need on it in order to ensure it arrives at the right destination – if not it might be time to brush up on your driving skills!!!!

References:

https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/first-who-then-what.html

https://www.johnolivant.com/good-to-great-jim-collins-book-review/

https://www.oberlo.co.uk/blog/good-to-great

Quote: https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/first-who-then-what.html