Bonus Episode 13: Communicate Purpose

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Hi, this is Stephen McLain of the finance leader podcast. This is bonus episode number 13. This week I'm sharing an encore episode from Season number two. Episode Number 14 about communicating purpose. Purpose gives us the reason for what we do and why we show up every day. It's our job as leaders to communicate purpose to our team members, so they better understand how they contribute to the organization and can get excited about the brand. When we know our purpose, we can better support the customer. Purpose is what we do and vision is where we are going. I'm working on bringing season number four to you, which will debut on November 10.

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continue to grow and develop and ensure your team members are to enjoy. Thank you.

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This week on the finance leader podcast I am talking about communicating purpose to your team and creating a vision for them to follow. Why do we have a job? Are we making a positive impact? These are important questions. Our team needs purpose. Our time is not just about getting tasks done. It's about getting the right tasks done that serve a greater vision. It's about making a positive impact and joy. Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host Stephen McLain. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. Have you been watching the Chicago Bulls documentary on ESPN about their last championship season?

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It's been thrilling to get reminded how much Michael Jordan wanted to win. In today's terms, he might be called a bully or even toxic, but he believed in my opinion, don't play. If you don't want to win, we will practice and we will prepare for our competition. They are our enemy, and I'll get my teammates ready to meet them in that battlespace. That was his thoughts, we will be ready to battle. He accepted no less than 100% commitment to winning, you have to put in the hard work.

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And I like that it's been a great series to watch great series to listen and get insight on how champions operate, how champions approach competition, how champions approach a challenge and how they overcome adversity. It's been great to watch the interviews and look at the dynamics of how great athletes get together and try to win a championship. It takes dedication, it takes commitment.

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It takes reaching for excellence it takes pushing each other. And Michael Jordan was all that for every championship season that they made a run for all six of their championship seasons, he expected that excellence and even in the in the years that they didn't make it to the championship or didn't earn a ring or didn't make it that far in the playoffs from day one that he walked on the court. He expected excellence It doesn't matter if he was a rookie or if he was in his last year. He wanted the very best out of his teammates, nothing less than excellence. It's tough to match up. It's tough to meet that expectation. It was tough for his teammates. And I completely understand it's tough to communicate that kind of purpose and vision to the people who work around you. It's exciting to watch, and I can't wait to see the conclusion. This is episode number 14. And today we are talking about purpose and vision for your team. JOHN F.

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Kennedy said efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction. I want to tell you a story. Going into this episode, I have a friend who I served with in my last assignment in the army. His name's Marty and he used to tell this story to everybody he came across this is really a great story about why purpose matters that he had left the army to go work for a major food manufacturer. And no matter what he couldn't really not find purpose in his work. He couldn't find the magic for showing up to the office. He just couldn't get excited about packaged foods.

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And it didn't really matter to him what the product did for his customer. to him. It was food.

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And he just couldn't find his purpose. I had heard this story many times because he just loves sharing this. He loved talking about purpose. He loved the purpose United States Army and he just love talking about it.

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He believed purpose was the sole reason for why we go to work and I believe that too. So when he was working for this food manufacturer, he just didn't believe he had the same commitment as he did when he was serving in the army. He was not excited about his work. So he made the decision to return to the army and it was probably the best decision for him. Because the army gave him purpose, he wasn't a good fit for the food manufacturer, he was a great fit for the army. And Matter of fact, he may still be serving, it might be difficult to find a highly motivational purpose for the industry you're working in.

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I understand. So let's get into this purpose, who and what do we serve? And what do we deliver?

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Why do we show up every day? Why do we log into our computers is it only to complete tasks that are issued to us what an empty existence if that is true, knowing our purpose is essential to deciding what tasks we do and how we commit our effort in our time, your purpose is why you show up every day. And the positive impact you can make your team needs to be reminded continually of their purpose, it gives them a reason for moving forward, a team who knows and understands their purpose and who embrace their purpose can be very powerful.

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You literally can change lives and the direction of the company. Just imagine if all the teams in the company embraced and fully understood their purpose, that will be a successful company, indeed, and we build our communication around our purpose. Every day, everything we talk about is around purpose, everything we do, and then you ask what if our industry is dull, like in a story that I talked about with Marty, my friend, it's up to us as leaders to create excitement.

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It doesn't matter what the industry you are, and I'm encouraging you to find the reason for why you exist focus on the customer, and what they need, communicate that need every day and create interest in the customer. What impact do you want to make? Do you want to make a positive impact on your organization? Now in finance, in accounting, we impact decision makers making better decisions for the company making better decisions that can deliver a better experience to the customer. No, sometimes in the big picture, and finance and accounting, we don't always get a chance to see that customer experience. Because we're always at a distance, it's sometimes it's a little difficult. But the great thing about finance and accounting is that we get to dive into numbers, and we get to see the analytics, and we get to see what's happening with the customer, even though we may not see the customer. And we get a chance to do some great analysis. And we get a chance to look at the numbers in the books. And we get to provide some great analysis and some great insights to decision makers, which then can make a better decision for the company, which then can lead to a better experience for the customer. And that's what we need to continually embrace and communicate to our teams. We are working every day so that the executive team can make better decisions for the company. Now let's talk about vision for just a moment, your vision is about where you will go in the future.

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It's a roadmap for success. Now you need to match your team's vision to your organization's vision. Now, once you've determined your purpose, then you can determine your vision, you will know what your team needs to do, then you can develop the roadmap to where your team needs to go, you can do that assessment, and then you can match it to what the company needs you to do. That's where you can establish goals, you will determine where your team will go in the future, you can then start to see what goals you have for the team followed by how to shape their individual development plans for your team members, you can determine to see what skills are missing, what training needs to be completed, how to guide your team members to develop so they deliver the purpose and to accomplish the vision. So we talked about purpose and vision goals and individual development plan. So you've created your purpose, why do we exist? Where do we want to go? Now we can establish some goals to go from purpose to vision, then we start to put these goals and these objectives around what we need to do. And we start putting it on the team members individual development plans. And now we can see how all that kind of works together purpose, vision, goals, planning and training.

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Now we can see how this all fits together. Purpose vision, now you have goals, and you place them on your training plans, and you start to develop your team members. I love talking about purpose, love talking about vision, love to get people excited about what they do every day about talking to my team members, get them excited for whatever we're going to do that day and do for that week, and do for the month in the coming months. That's what leaders do, we got to get our team excited about the work we're doing. So that's what I'm going to encourage you to do. Now for an easy win. I'm asking you to really understand the purpose and vision of your company. And what I want you to do is to write out one sentence, why your team matters to the company.

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Okay, write one sentence to why your team matters to the company you're working for. Then I want you to add in a little bit of brand industry specifications that consider the overall customer and how your team adds value to the customer. And it might be Big Picture. And that's okay. Then after you have developed that concept, I want you to clearly communicate what you have developed to your team, understand your company's purpose and vision, write out a sentence, why your team matters to the company, then add a little bit about what the customer means to the company.

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And then what does your team do to add value, and then let's talk about it with your team and communicate it. And then let's establish some goals where we want to go start doing that assessment. And then let's get people excited about coming in every day, or logging into their computer and doing their tasks doing the right tasks in the right order. And everything they do matches up to that vision matches up to why they come in and why they work for the company every day, it can be really exciting. And then you're going to start to see different output from everyone as they embrace the vision and the embrace their purpose, and then they can see what you're talking about. Now you're getting excited. And then you start to shape how they're going to be trained and developed. And then they're going to start to have a little bit more buy in about what you want them to achieve. And it's all going to produce a better team and better output for your team and then better output to the company itself. And then which should translate into a better experience for the customer. Okay, in this episode, we talked about purpose, and we talked about vision. And I want to close with some information that I found. This is from a survey that Gallup published back in 2018. In in their survey, they said that only 22% of respondents strongly agree that company leaders had a clear direction for their companies.

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And that's only 22%. Now what happens when only the purpose and vision remain at the executive level. And it doesn't ever get communicated throughout the organization? How can you effectively lead if you haven't communicated to the team, where you're going? What if it only stays at the executive level and doesn't get shared? You're going to have a whole bunch of teams that don't know why they're there a whole bunch of team members who are just doing tasks and don't really know why it matters, don't really know why they're existing don't really know why they're there other than the collected paycheck.

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Again, let's start to communicate that vision, that purpose, and start to really get people excited about why they're working for the company. All right, next week, I'll be treating you to an encore episode from season one due to the Memorial Day weekend. That's coming up. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader podcast, I am dedicated to helping you grow your leadership. I hope you enjoyed the show today. You can get this episode wherever you find podcasts. Please join our community on Facebook, the finance leader podcast Facebook group, this will be our community to grow within the finance and accounting profession. Until next time, you can check out more resources at Stephen McLain calm and sign up for my updates so you don't miss an episode of the show. Now go lead your team and I'll see you next time. Thank you

Bonus Episode 13: Communicate Purpose

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