Your employees, your greatest strength
How-to
1 – Share the power
Growing businesses need to stay agile, and to do that, you need to give employees room to manoeuvre, according to François-Xavier Souvay, founder and president of Lumenpulse, company that makes high performance architectural lighting systems. “Yes, you need to have a vision and give direction to the business, but you also need to give some control to the people who work for you. It’s the execution of the plan that creates value. Money comes as a result of doing things well.”
2- A little crazy can lead to innovation
How can you encourage the creative process? Daniel Lamarre, President and CEO of Cirque du Soleil says you need to be open to a little controlled chaos. “Define the boundaries of your sandbox by communicating your goals, budget and expectations. The mandate needs to be very clear. But within the sandbox, let people do what they want.” This way of operating allows you to keep control of the mandate, while giving employees freedom, he says.
3- Diversity is good
Daniel Lamarre also advocates for diversity within work teams. “If everyone thinks the same way, your projects will be bland. To bring colour to your projects, you need different people.” Diversity in age, sex and race not only gives you a creative advantage, but a financial one too. Companies with a good balance of men and women on their management team are 15% more likely to report financial performance that’s higher than the industry average, according to a study from McKinsey Company. And if you have significant cultural diversity as well, that number goes up to 30%. In its report The Diversity Dividend, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation notes that a 1% increase in ethnocultural diversity in a company can increase revenue by 2.4% and productivity by 0.5%.
Want to know the next steps?
Read the complete article on the Clearfacts.ca website of the National Bank
