Written by: Noel Powers, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
If you think that making the most profits for shareholders is motivating your team to work harder - you're dead wrong. Most companies operate on the idea of simply maximizing ROI, make the product cheaper, and employ the least laborers to improve the bottom line. But the leaders of the most profitable and best-loved brands understand what is counter-intuitive to the rest of the pack: Vision drives the highest profits. The flow of vision to profit stems from leaders that motivate people not by the desire for money but the desire to make a positive impact on the lives of others. And the greater the impact, the greater the profit. No leader understands this process better than Steve Jobs who transformed Apple from 90 days to bankruptcy into the world's most valuable brand in ten years by switching its primary focus away from "improving the bottom line" to sharing a compelling vision.
3 Steps to Drive Higher Profit Through Vision:
1. Start with purpose: Define the positive impact you intend to make on others' lives. Steve Jobs dedicated his career in Apple to empowering "the individual" by creating innovative devices that improved the way they lived. This clear vision filled the corps of Apple with the highest motivation in the tech industry. Every employee understands the deeper meaning of their work, they "make a positive dent in the universe." Jobs instilled a rigorous policy of producing only a handful of products that were truly transformative to the customer. He regaled his teams that nothing mattered compared to the user experience. The year he came back to Apple as interim CEO he eliminated 90% of the inventory composed of several dozen non-innovative "me too" products that weren't selling from the Apple factory, effectively steering it back into profitability within 90 days of complete insolvency.
If you do not come in first in positive customer impact, you will inevitably fight to avoid coming in last and will lose your market share.
2. Share a distinct brand message: Communicate your vision. People make buying decisions with the limbic system, the part of the brain connected to feelings. These feelings form beliefs that shape particular values and ideals. What are your ideals? Who shares those ideals? How do your ideals directly benefit everyone in and surrounding your company? Steve Jobs understood that in order to restore Apple as the world's premier tech leader it couldn't be viewed simply as "a company" that "sold computers" he had to craft a succinct message that captured the all-encompassing ideal and experience of the brand to electrify people into behaving with lifelong devotion and loyalty- to functionally band together as a tribe and in this spirit created perhaps the most influential and well-recognized company slogan in all history:
Think Different.
When the Think Different message was coupled with its revolutionary portable digital products like the iPod Apple transformed itself from a boutique brand selling to a niche group of 5% of American tech consumers into the dominant leader of all industry sales, selling to 80% of American tech consumers and in the process became the world's most valuable brand, all within 10 years of near-bankruptcy.
3. Structure your company around its vision: If you want unconventional results, you must have an unconventional organization. The inputs create the outputs. Most companies ask themselves; How can we use the logistics to change the numbers and get people motivated to get onboard with it? If you wish to provide vision for long-range superior profits, ask yourself: What is the product of your vision and how do you reverse engineer it to seamlessly combine the human elements of leadership and motivation, to work toward a human ideal applying the science of logistics?
Jobs followed this formula; he pinpointed the ideal human impact by creating a company of only "A" players to salvage Apple’s finances in the short-term and move it steadily toward greater achievements in the long-term. Anyone that didn't commit to a culture of exceptionalism where superior products were the bottom line, was out. First, he fired the board of directors because they had no vision and therefore were incapable of leadership. All their decisions came from the myopic view of quarterly reports and predictions on spreadsheets. Next, he did a shakedown of all the people working for the company, keeping them on only if their personal values and skillsets aligned with the company vision. Finally, he created collaborative teams that combined the top experts in design, marketing, and logistics all working side-by-side making corrections and improvements in real-time. No other tech company organized itself to be continuously innovative. Only Apple could produce the products it made, the advancements it patented-always creating the next trend, further enhancing their consumers' ability to integrate all areas of their lives in the digital age with the addition of each new product.
Because Apple retains the vision Steve Jobs clarified of maximizing its positive impact on the individual, it has set itself apart and above all its competitors with the lasting reign of profit that naturally follows. Apple motivates its corps, not by ROI rhetoric but the rallying cry to "Make a positive dent in the universe" to "Think Different" to never be less than exceptional. It molds its internal structure to create what's around the next bend- to generate excitement and demand by crafting the perfect product experience for its loyal customers every time.
Jobs had a hand in creating and revolutionizing six separate industries over his thirty-six-year career and never went into business wanting to make money in the short term- he always focused on the intangibles first: create a great company that would stand as an innovative leader for generations, to put his vision, his very DNA into Apple to stand not only as a ledger of financial success but as a legacy of personal contribution and has left a clear path that successfully defies the logic of mainstream business for us to follow to do the same.
Noel Powers is a Business Vision Coach with 20 years of experience in the field of leadership and mentoring. Her company NFactor Coaching has helped thousands of CEOs and entrepreneurs instantly lead and grow their companies with vision with a convenient online 12-Week Shakedown. If you feel inspired to maximize the positive impact of your leadership through your company.
Enjoy a free PDF download for your first step to leading and profiting with vision.
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Noel Powers, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Her lifelong passion for helping entrepreneurs unlock their potential by discovering their vision and leadership style inspired her to create NFactor Coaching, combining the best practices from her 20 years of training and teaching in some of the world's largest business training circuits, including BNI and Peak Potentials.
Noel takes clients through a unique Vision-to-Profit process, identical to the thinking and habits that led many of the leaders of today's top companies (like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Sarah Blakely) from inspired start-ups to industry dominance. Noel facilitates this process, teaching Entrepreneurs and CEOs the unique traits (she has coined "E" traits) that UNLOCK their power to instantly lead and grow their companies with Vision with a convenient, online Trademarked 12-Week Shakedown.
This interview with Coach Noel will share powerful tips that help you employ the human elements of Visionary Leadership to build a brand people want to buy so that you can transform your company's vision into profit.
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