In December, we decided to tear apart our company’s Purpose. (Ever been there?)
It’s the time of year when our leadership team gathers together for our annual planning meeting. We use EOS/Traction for our business, so part of that agenda involved reviewing our Vision/Traction Organizer (V/TO).
The V/TO includes our Core Focus, Purpose, Core Values, 10 Year Target, etc.
Most years we review those things and often, they still ‘seem right’ so we don’t change them. But this year we really picked apart our Purpose. None of us really loved it. 👎🏼
We all felt that in addition to ‘feeling right,’ our Purpose has to inspire 🌟 each of us, as well as our team, our clients, and our future clients.
I’m not sure if that’s an absolute requirement for EOS, but it’s the expectation we had for our Purpose.
The good news is that we landed on a Purpose that we all love, and it feels authentic to us: Unlocking technology's potential to empower people and drive impact in a dynamic world.
We shared this Purpose recently with a potential new team member, and he pointed out that the most compelling part to him about it is that ultimately what we’re doing is ‘empowering people.’
I’ve been thinking about that a lot since then.
It’s a natural human desire for our work to be meaningful. We create that meaning through the impact we have on other people.
A recent RevOps Champions podcast, a mash-up of many great podcast learnings from 2024, made me realize that almost all of the takeaways are about…people.
Nobody really cares that much about technology, or data, or process, except to the extent that it impacts and empowers people.
Luke Carlson gave an example of the human impact when onboarding new employees. He says it’s important to understand when people are better served learning from a live person in front of them, versus learning everything from an LMS (Learning Management System). It’s not LMS versus in-person learning, but finding the right combination of both of them.
Sangram Vajre shared that “You need the human in the loop [of AI] to make sense of things, and test different things.” That’s how AI continues to get better, and help people even more.
Casey Brown believes that the impact of AI on people in professional services firms in particular is a huge opportunity to bring even more value to their clients.
And Jaime Taets summed it all up: “It has nothing to do with the tech. It has everything to do with human energy moving in a different direction.”
So as leaders in business, we get that the people 👨🏼🤝👨🏽 component is the most important. It’s why we all do what we do. But how can we empower people even more?
I would love to hear your thoughts on this question. Seriously - let me know what’s worked for you!
There’s a number of ways we strive to empower our Denamico clients:
- Helping translate their vision of their ideal future state into a plan
- Helping align and get buy-in from all of their stakeholders
- Incorporating change management methodologies in big projects
- Using pilot programs to test and optimize a new system before onboarding everyone
- Using our experience to reduce risk and increase the likelihood of achieving the goal
- Helping create quick wins that lead to momentum
The outcomes of these lead to enabling people to focus their time on the work they enjoy, helping people to make better decisions, allowing people to be more efficient with what they can accomplish, and creating more value for their customers.
We can do those things because we leverage technology, but the reason we want to do them is because of the impact they have on the people involved.
So in a world that can sometimes feel overwhelming, where the pace of change is fast and a lot is out of our control, keeping our focus on the people around us, and what we can do personally to have a positive impact on and inspire them, seems like a worthy purpose to me.
Cheers,
Kristin
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Kristin Dennewill
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