Why We Do What We Do

As we match towards 2014, it is important to remind ourselves about why we do what we do as business. Why do customers continue to rely on our content, delivery capability and follow-up. Why do we continue to get referrals and why do people who attend our workshops give us 9 or 10 in our post workshop assessments.

To be sure, our plan is to run a profitable business, with solid margins and great pipeline of future business. But as I reflect, what keeps Julia Nansubuga  - a 6-7 month pregnant woman running through the parking lot of Uganda Revenue Authority to deliver a proposal ahead of time, is not the profitability of the business or the prospects of future options. And as the ex-Google Uganda employee opined “this is great and I know I am in the right place”.

That “right place” is right because of our mission. As FranklinCovey Executive Vice President, Sean Covey put it in his December memo to owners, “In the end, we do what we do because we care about our mission.  We are a mission driven business, not a business with a mission. Why are we in business?  Because we believe we can help individuals, teams, and organizations achieve their potential through applying universal principles of effectiveness.  This is why I, personally, belong to this organization versus any other, because I believe we have a unique stewardship to fulfill that no other organization on the earth can fulfill.  Our purpose is to unleash human potential and no one knows better how to do this than we do.  We understand the whole person.  We understand that culture (the quality of the relationships that exists within an organization) is the ultimate competitive advantage and eats strategies for breakfast”

And it is the unique stewardship to understand every client through a rigorous process of determining client requirements and collaborating to deliver a solution that exactly meets their needs, that sets us apart. It is this culture that we must work to improve in coming years ahead. We must look to every client engagement driven by our values of excellence, service, compassion and the integrity to deliver on our commitments. While ensuring that the quality of relationships in our side our team is driven by an intent and intense desire to make ourselves better people, our team a model for executing on our highest priorities and enable our customers to achieve.

While customers have told us that we have a 9 or 10 in content, delivery and follow-up, we must look inward to consistently deliver the same numbers for the way we relate as a team. Holding one another accountable and volunteering support where needed. No one has the exclusive reserve to knowledge or performance but as we value our differences, we will live out the principle that says together, we create a better and higher way. Indeed we must work on our relationships and way of doing things – our culture. It is this cultures not our wildly important goals or lead measures that will make the difference. It is our culture that will drive the 9s and 10s.

As Thomas Carlyle put it, “Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being”.  When we give our best to one another in service to the client and ourselves, we become our best and become what we were ultimately created to be.