There are always keys to winning

As we get closer the the NCAA national championship game between Ohio State and Notre Dame, the coaching staffs of both teams are hard at work putting together their game plans and working on executing those plans. The coaches know that there will be a few keys to winning the game!

Similarly, every business organization needs to identify their keys to success and strive to execute those items at a high level to experience success. The challenge for many in business is to take the time to find those keys and act upon what they discover.

I have found five key concepts to be helpful in this process. Since we are still early in 2025, I want to share those with you as many are still firming up their plans for the year.

If I were to speak to any organization on tough, challenging topics, I would build that talk around these five key points for consideration. While not everyone will agree with all five, they do challenge us to think differently and remember that we won't get extraordinary results doing ordinary things!

Doing fewer things better consistently may be your key to success!

There are so many things we can focus on, spend time on, invest funds on, and demand from our people that it can easily become unmanageable. We can place so many burdens on our people that do all they can to just respond to the expectations and have little time left to focus on driving business success.

What are the 3-5 focus areas that truly drive success? There are plenty of "good" things to focus on, but what are those that are essential for success? I always tried to think of what was the one thing that would impact everything. For me, reliability in manufacturing was key to so many things we were trying to achieve. Reliability was key to safety, customer service, cost reduction, waste reduction, production volume, and quality of life for a our people. As such, our operational focus was targeted on reliability improvement and nothing else because it drove everything else!

Invest some time to find those 3-5 keys to drive your business success! One has to be disciplined to say no to other "good" things to focus on these "great" things. By focusing on those areas that have potential to have the most impact, organizations can better utilize resources and target investment funding, people development, and metrics to highlight those areas!

While many say we should be doing more, I say we should be doing less, but doing less better more consistently! Be great at what matters most!

It's not culture or strategy, but rather culture as a part of your strategy!

The age old argument of whether culture or strategy is more important comes into play in almost every organization. They may not refer to it as such, but it happens more than you realize. When leadership development is relegated to an HR initiative off to the side and given little attention, culture doesn't matter. When strategy is nothing more than a dream or hope that something happens with very little planned, there is no real strategy.

However, when culture becomes part of the strategy, the organization gets the best of both and is better equipped to experience success and fulfill their purpose/mission. Strategy is asking the question and ensuring we are doing right things. Strategy is formulating a business plan that can both be executed and drive success. When we value teamwork, leadership, and the power of engaged people, we include those elements as a key factor in our strategy. When we see people as a competitive advantage and a differentiator, we have added a powerful and necessary element to the strategy!

Develop a solid strategy to provide direction, but ensure people are at the center of that plan!

Fit matters more than resume!

If we were honest, we would love to hire folks and just turn the job over to them. We love "plug in play" hires. We pore over the resume and seek the candidate with the most experience if we can find one!

I can't tell you how often early in my hiring career that I was a resume and experience hiring type. However, as I grew to not only appreciate workplace culture but to also have it as my primary focus to build a successful operation, I changed my view considerably. It wasn't that I didn't value experience and demonstrated ability, but that I wanted "fit" more.

By "fit", I am referring to an individual's ability to share core convictions, mesh with the team, and be a key part of our workplace culture. Fit is a key factor in teambuilding, alignment, support, and mutual accountability. Fit enables the organization to have a multiplying impact rather than just the addition of another body to the organization.

I would go as far to say that I would rather have an inexperienced person with the ability to grow quickly in the role and be a great fit for the organization than someone that is very experienced (could contribute from day one) but would not contribute to the teambuilding, ownership culture, or shared support within the organization. Sure the experienced person would contribute quickly to a degree, but six months down the road who would you rather have on your team?

I have gone as far as seeking the "right" people rather than the "right" candidate. People that have the ability to learn and grow quickly, but that also have shared convictions, ability to lead others, and be great teammates have a place in the organization. It's just a matter of getting them on the team and pointing them in the direction you want them to go!

Surround yourself with like-minded people, diverse in background, but similar in care for people, the purpose, and passion for executing the plan!

A positive environment can be a competitive advantage!

I have seen my share of negative environments over the years. Negative-based avoidance goals, punishment for negative results, and fear tactics to promote more effort and better results were at the foundation of these examples. Needless to say, a negative focus almost never results in better results unless someone is just not motivated to work.

In most cases, people genuinely want to do a good job. They don't need to pushed or threatened to provide effort and get results. The negative approach does much more harm than good. A negative environment is at the source of the majority of employee disengagement today.

However, a positive work environment is one that has positive activity based goals that drive results, recognizes outstanding effort when present, and provides hope and direction to the organization. A positive environment is one that has high levels of communication, interaction, and input from all levels and sources. A positive environment is also one that develops people, builds teams, and strives to reach potential rather than some arbitrary benchmark.

A positive environment is not one that forgets about accountability but rather elevates accountability within the organization as a responsibility to others on the team. Mutual accountability is present within the organization and between departments or divisions. The environment is one that team members consider themselves to be "owners" and act accordingly. The environment brings out the best in everyone!

A positive environment attracts, retains, and engages people to drive results. It is a competitive advantage in a very transactional based negative business climate today.

Take the time and take a step back and evaluate your organization. Look where you can inject positivity into every facet of the operation. You may have to remove some negativity to make the impact you need!

You can't save your way to success, but it still matters!

I have lived through my share of cost-cutting initiatives over the years. There is no doubt that every organization needs to be cost conscious and efficient with spending. We need to make solid investments, operate right-sized organizations, and manage our costs well! However, that is not the key to making profit.

The market is the key. Our understanding of our market(s) is essential to ensuring that we are providing the right products/services, charging the right prices, and engaging with the right customers. The market is why we got into business in the first place. Producing goods and/or providing services only matters if someone wants them. We have a business because there is a demand for what we do.

So many organizations lose sight of the importance of market and focus all their improvement efforts internally. They suffer through endless operational improvement initiatives to not get the needed results. While all the time they ignore market dynamics and just accept whatever happens as inevitable outside the walls of the operation.

While you have to be competitive operationally and need to execute well, the market is your key to success! You can lose operationally by being sloppy, but you win being successful in the market!

Take the necessary steps to better understand your market, connect with the right customers, add value to those customers, and achieve the pricing/margins you need to be successful.

Summary

Just five challenging thoughts for you to consider before you get too far into 2025! Hopefully, at least one, if not more, of those are useful as you move forward with your plans! Ask the hard questions and be willing to change. If you want different results, you will need to do something different!