The contrast between the enjoyable journey that could have been, and the one we actually experienced related in many ways to the tribulations small businesses face while moving toward their goals. When employees don’t understand the company’s values and instead perform work in ways they think best, the company creates an environment that generates opposing wind and waves. Effort is diffused, ideas are misaligned and ultimately customers pay the price in poor service.

In our first ever attempt to align everyone at the company – and get us all paddling in synch so to speak, I created a 45 day long blitz designed to teach specific departmental values, while also encouraging individual ideas and contribution. Here’s how it worked.

To keep things simple, I divided the company into three groups – and then assigned a specific value to each group.
Group A:   Those that interfaced daily with existing clients
Value:         Cultivate loyalty. (Increase our client’s motivation to remain a customer for life.)

Group B:  Those involved with marketing and selling to prospective clients
Value:        Cultivate desire.  (Increase the prospects desire to become a Cogent Road customer)

Group C:  Those involved with management, engineering or back office work.
Value:        Cultivate innovation. (Increase the ability to create better ways of doing things)

Lastly I assigned one overarching corporate value for all groups.
Value for all employees: Cultivate Excellence. (Increase our ability to become the best).

On Monday morning, June 1st we kicked off the blitz – complete with posters and a blitzed themed office decor. As employees filtered in to the office that morning they were presented with a small, newly sprouted plant in a colorful pot. Each pot was preassigned to an individual employee. On one side of the pot the label read (in the case of a customer service employee, for example) “I am cultivating loyalty”. On the other side the main corporate value, “I am cultivating excellence”. The idea for the blitz was that every employee was to “cultivate” his or her plant – the plant symbolizing their designated values. Each person had free rein to come up with any idea they wished to make the plant grow and no one would tell them what to do. The only rule was that during the week, the plants had to remain in the office. At the end of 45 days whomever had the largest, healthiest plant and also best demonstrated innovative cultivation tactics would win a very nice prize.

During the blitz employees could not avoid reading and re-reading their own departmental value and the overarching corporate value clearly labeled on their plants. As they thought about different ways to “cultivate” their plant, they would also be learning how to think and execute ideas on their own. They exercise encouraged self management because no one was telling them what to do or how to do it. I believed the blitz would strengthen our corporate innovation muscle. To further stimulate thinking and ideation, we offered weekly prizes to individuals that submitted department specific ideas in alignment with their values.

The results were beyond my expectations. New bonds formed as people interacted with others not normally in their sphere. One example was the customer service reps carrying plants into programmer’s offices in hopes of placing them by the window for the day. And we laughed uproariously at some of the wacky ideas people had to cultivate their plants. (FYI, washing a plant’s roots will not help in the least).

In the end, Linh, one of our tax product managers won a 40” flat screen TV with a plant many believed had to be on steroids. Quan (or “Q” as he is known around the office), came in second and won a night on the town for he and his girlfriend.

And Cogent Road won too.

Cogent Road is growing rapidly and my partner and I are extremely busy. To ensure we spend time thinking, we engage each day in what we call our “Focused Forty”. This is committed block of 40 minutes during which we sit in front of a whiteboard and discuss the future of the business. For those 40 minutes we sit atop Cogent Road’s crows nest peering through binoculars to determine which way our ship should go. If we didn’t schedule this time, we may well drift any which way the industry winds blow.

It was during a recent Focused Forty that we began harping on our competitors. Over the years we have watched our competitors copy nearly everything we do. More than a few competitors have even cut and pasted entire pages of copy from our website  into their own. (I’m talking entire pages word for word!). And they’ve copied our software innovations too. Most recently ScoreAll, an innovative idea in which all available credit scores may be purchased for a low cost with a credit report – and the highest ones added to the file.

Yet, after a short time we laughed because we realized Cogent Road had thought leadership. Rather than  creating their own futures – they are simply looking at us. Where we go – so go the rest. For them, this is easier and safer. But in the long run this management style is self defeating.

Instead of worrying about your competitors copying your latest strategy – stay focused on the future. Spend time thinking and creating innovations that will lead your business into new markets – and hence new revenue streams. Competition exists when two or more companies battle it out using the exact same products, service and strategy. Consider the airlines or the American automobile industry. This is a bloody war that leaves no victor. Instead, look ahead…where there is only endless ocean and blue sky.

Thinking like this is difficult. Acting on your ideas is harder still. But as the leader of your business, there is no more important work.