Is the “Why” of Your Business Strong Enough?
Many companies are on the same page about the benefits of a well-defined and communicated core purpose. They’ve hired an expensive consultant, ordered merch and covered various office surfaces with purposeful artwork and messaging. However, all the mugs and T-shirts are mere cosmetic changes without the true alignment with their core purpose. You can read more about how a noble sense of mission (ie. A core purpose) attracts the greatest talents in a previous blog. An employee motivated by more than money will go above and beyond the tasks listed in their contract. And that is the gold worth mining for!
There is no trick here. You simply have to live up to your values to inspire this kind of loyalty and zeal.
Discretionary effort can loosely be defined as the deeds and actions one produces more than the job they’ve been engaged to deliver. A well-established, frequently communicated core purpose should connect with people’s hearts and inspire a sense of mission.
Perhaps the best examples of discretionary effort are born in crisis, where people are moved to selfless acts by a sense of patriotism and duty to their people. Consider these examples of discretionary effort using the current situation in Israel as a reference point.
A 95-year-old Israeli man volunteers as a reservist on the front line. Too old for physical battle, he performs the role of a morale booster.
A group of doulas that live across Israel have volunteered their services to any woman giving birth without her husband because of their calling up for service in the most current war.
Jews from all over the world are offering their help to Israel, including gravedigging, medical assistance and providing religious articles to the soldiers on the battlefront.
An announcement on Facebook called for people to host displaced families from south Israel. 6,000 families found temporary homes in 45 minutes.
A Jewish man stood quietly near the El Al counter in the New York’s JFK airport. Anyone who showed him an Israeli Defense Force call-up notice would have their tickets paid for by him. At the time of writing, he had paid for 250 tickets.
(These examples were taken from an article in The Lamplighter Issue #1628, written by Chana Weisberg).
There may be a number of words that embody the core purpose driving these kinds of acts, but it doesn’t really matter.
A sense of community and purpose is where they’ll think of innovative ideas, go out of their way to support a customer, jump in to support another department and put in extra hours.
How much discretionary effort are you seeing across your business? What are some recent specific examples? How often are you calling out and celebrating these deeds? If you can amplify the number of these discretionary actions, watch your business fly!
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