Entrepreneurs and enterprises alike recognize the evolving strategy involved to move the needle within your business.
Whether you desire to increase the lifetime value of customers, generate new business leads, or elevate your profit margins, your business success requires more than a strategy:
Success resides in how you humanize your business processes for your personal sustainability.
What is differentiation?
I’ve been exposed to varied operational approaches throughout my career, operating within diverse business environments including organizations, institutions, startups, and firms.
While structurally diverse in nature, the operational approaches inside often lacked differentiation: where processes are modeled around the individualized natures of the human beings responsible for driving business.
- Context: Corporate. Shifts were my mode of operation while working in the hospitality sector. Here, employees clock in and clock out; in the time between, they are measured by the same performance metrics: the ability to deliver in sales and customer satisfaction.
- Context: Startup. Sprints were my mode of operation while working in the technology sector. The leader largely defines the OKRs for the workforce, and the workforce is measured by one tracking system: a set of KPIs that capture a specific snapshot of performance.
In theory, both shifts and sprints are effective; though in practice, any one-size-fits-all structure comes at the risk of implicit bias:
People are seen as successful by virtue of their conformance and compliance to these structures.
Since every human being has their own unique talents, workflows, thought processes, and energetic aptitude, a performance structure can limit the potential of people to deliver their best ideas… the very ideas responsible for driving business.
Since every human being has their own unique talents, workflows, thought processes, and energetic aptitude, a performance structure can limit the potential of people to deliver their best ideas… the very ideas responsible for driving business.
My Neurodivergent Experience
Upon entering entrepreneurship, I recognized my personal growth and sustainability would come through humanizing my business operations: to unlearn the ways of doing business that were out of sync with my natural rhythms and tendencies.
As a neurodivergent thinker, I have distinct tendencies: deep ideation and synthesis, hyperfocus, and a desire for repetition. I’ve learned to harness these autistic assets, and I’m patient with my process.
While some days can be all about operational output, other days are entirely devoted to non-time, ideation, and complete presence. This self-awareness to my individual processes has grown through years of reflection and experimentation.
Along the way, I’ve created a socially innovative business structure that works for me and those I serve: strategic initiatives.
The strategic initiative is a masterful business structure: a mission-oriented special project designed to harness human potential; it elevates awareness to divergent modes of operating, creates impact internally and externally, and generates for the bottomline.
Here’s how it works: You give individuals time and space within their work day to strategically utilize their creativity and productivity. This spaciousness, backed by a strategy and timeline, goes beyond maximizing ROI:
Initiatives foster deep levels of enjoyment, engagement, and purpose at work.
When socially conscious leaders hire me to design and develop personalized initiatives in accordance with their business objectives, we position ourselves as thought partners to foster accountability to both personal growth and business development.
Forward The Action: Launch An Initiative
Whether you are an entrepreneur desiring to generate new business or an organizational leader looking to activate new levels of teamwork, productivity and creativity, you can take these steps to launch an initiative:
1. Connect with your next great idea. What’s a way to showcase value to your audience?
2. Assess the idea’s viability: How will this idea serve people, the planet, and your paycheck?
3. Decide on your initiative. What resources and support are needed to drive this idea forward?
4. Scope the initiative. What will be the order of operations in bringing the idea to life?
5. Commit to your initiative. Who or what will be your accountability structure in driving this initiative forward?
Ultimately, the benefit of a differentiated operational structure is more than the business growth and sustainability. Initiatives are a way to enhance your professional fulfillment by making space for your creative contribution.
Because after all is said and done, can we all agree:
Enjoying your everyday work is the ultimate measure of business success.
Looking for a thought partner and strategic consultant to drive new results in your business?
If you’re a facilitator looking to design a high-impact program or an organizational leader launching a team initiative in your workplace, Higher Playbook is currently accepting new clients. The calendar is now open to explore partnership opportunities. Book a call now.
