When communities, organizations, groups, clubs, or any other foundation that consists of people who come together, they do so because they share a common group of principles, values, or beliefs and together they hold a common goal, regardless if it is articulated or not.
It could be a business goal or simply an accomplishment, but nonetheless the group always has these mutual understandings and beliefs which has led them to finding one another within the rest of society.
Many times as leaders of these groups or organizations we spend too much time worrying about business results and execution, while losing sight of the things that actually do matter, such as the most important piece of it all: people. People create results, people build organizations, and most importantly people bring results, however, we spend a significant amount of time on the technical and logical substance forgetting the basics: people.
People help us bring ideas to life, but more importantly people believe in us as leaders and believe in our cause or else they wouldn’t be helping us with sweat and tears. They would not sacrifice their personal time to see us succeed, so we should ask ourselves do we do the same in return for them?
How many times do we go out of our way to ensure what people’s concerns that are in our groups or organizations are actually taken seriously? How many times do we personally communicate with those at the core of our groups rather than expect others to do it for us? How often do we ensure those that truly dedicate their time and sweat are aligned with why we make decisions which results harder on them?
We often don’t and as a result over time, our organization becomes operational rather than purpose driven. Our individuals become tied to a paycheck rather than consumed with our vision as they once were and certainly we lose track of why we as leaders choose to lead all these great people to begin with.
Investing time in those individuals is one of the main reasons amazing organizations become legendary and change the way we do business. The Google’s and Apple’s of our day are too far apart and few in between with the need of more amazing companies to join them in the ranks and allow other industries to innovate their respective fields. We as leaders of those new organizations, which will one day grow to perhaps, shape how society thinks or acts and must be aware of this from an early stage while never forgetting that without those around us who share our belief, our organizations simply won’t grow with magnitude and won’t allow us to be as great as leaders as we think we can be.
“Invest in those people who invest their beliefs in you.”
