Finding our WHY.

The last few years in Alberta have been challenging, there is no getting around it. People have been struggling to keep their jobs, pay their mortgages and sometimes even feed their families or themselves.

A little over a year ago, I gathered our team on a quiet Saturday morning to talk about our business. It was clear that we enjoyed working together but something needed to change. The time was upon us to make a pivot, persevere or stop decision. To be honest, there was a small part of me that wanted a stop decision to be the agreed upon outcome. Starting work at 6am and ending at 2am for almost three years straight was getting old. I was tired, my wife was worried and the kids missed their Dad.

The discussion started as expected. Why is our business costing us more than it is making? What new tactics or business models could we consider to change the game? Were we dealing with the right types of customers? Were our products and services solving the right problems in the marketplace? What is the competitive landscape? All great questions, but we had gone down that familiar road of traditional strategic thinking before...

After hours of brainstorming, I started to get frustrated and blurted out "Why are we really doing this? If it's just about a job then why the hell are we working so hard, let's just go work for someone else again". A few people glanced up, which indicated that maybe that was not such a bad idea. So we talked about it by sharing why we left our former careers to build this scrappy startup. It didn't satisfy us, we felt like cogs in a machine, we didn't feel a sense of connection to the impact of our actions. Fundamentally, we didn't feel like we were making a difference.

After reflecting on the past, I conjured up my best Steve Jobs and said "Team, I think that we all want to make a ding in the universe". I proceeded to share my story of a conversation that I had with Pat Nixon, founder of the Mustard Seed, on a previous flight home from Toronto. Pat told me that when he first moved to Calgary, the fences between homes were barely a foot high. Neighbors would stand in their back yards BBQ'ing, talking and getting to know each other. How's the family Joe? Anything exciting going on at work Ed? What are you building in the garage James? Want a beer Sue? As time went by, the fences got higher and the conversations stopped happening. Today, it's common for people to not know the names of their immediate neighbors. Pat said that real impact comes from people being aware of what's going on in their own backyards and lending a helping hand. He said that if we all looked into our own communities - the world could change. Mind blown.

As a team, we decided at that point that Alberta was our community and the businesses and non-profits were our neighbors. We needed to reach out to them and help them make their own pivot, persevere and stop decisions. It was clear that we were not the only business suffering, our entire province was full of companies just like us. We had been so focused on our small group of clients and projects that we didn't have a bigger purpose or mission guiding us. Together, as a team, we decided that we wanted to be a part of the turnaround story. We wanted to help Alberta businesses and non-profits figure out how to get through these times of uncertainty and disruption.

That Saturday morning, we found our purpose, and I learned the most valuable lesson in business - it's not what you do, or how you do it - it's why you do it.

JFIVE is on a mission to build a new future for Alberta. We are an innovation and design thinking consultancy that helps Alberta based corporations grow during times of uncertainty and disruption.

Please visit our website at www.jfive.ca or email us at info@jfive.ca to learn more.