IBEX

By Getty Stewart
Head of the Home Range

On a beautiful, sunny day this past summer, our family spontaneously decided to pack up the van and head to the beach. Within the hour, spirits soaring and flip flops flopping, we were ready and raring to go. About half way through the city, our sunny disposition clouded over as Darryl and I realized we were each planning to go to two different beaches; Darryl had imagined the east side of Lake Manitoba and I had imagined the east side of Lake Winnipeg. I won’t go into all the gory details; let’s just say after the dust settled, we had a lovely time in the Whiteshell!

What happened? Clearly there was a wee bit of miscommunication. Ok, let’s face it, there was a complete lack of communication. There were just a lot of assumptions about what each of us meant by “let’s go to the beach”. It was a stark reminder never to assume and to always clearly articulate your vision.

While being unclear about which beach to go to is pretty insignificant (although it didn’t seem like it at the time!), it does raise the question about the kind of assumptions we, as employers, are making at work and whether or not we clearly articulate our vision to our employees. Sure they may understand that we’re “heading to the beach”, but do they know which beach and how we’re going to get there?

At IBEX, despite knowing the importance of having a clear sense of direction that employees can align themselves with, we found this success strategy difficult to implement at first. It just seemed like there were too many changes happening too quickly all of the time to be able to set a clear direction for the future. It always seemed like just when we thought we had a plan, things changed. The economy changed, technology changed, opportunities changed, staff changed, customer needs changed, etc. How in the world can you be clear on where you’re going when things constantly change?

In our early days, we fell into this trap. In fact it was our main reason (ie. excuse) for why we didn’t articulate a clear sense of direction. The fact that things will always change seemed like a perfectly good reason not to commit to anything in particular. But eventually, we realized not being clear about our overall goal became too confusing and created too many unknowns.

We realized it was time to take the experts’ advice and actually create a vision of where we are going.

Now, we have a common mission and vision statement. We even have a list of values that gives everyone a good overview of who we are and the manner in which we will achieve our mission. Our statements may not be perfect, but they are meaningful to us and they are something the entire Herd can rally around.

And yes, we realize that the world will continue to change. But, oddly enough, setting a clear direction actually makes us feel more prepared than ever to handle those changes because we have our final destination and the spirit in how we wish to reach that destination firmly in mind. So while we may use different technology, reorganize our teams, update our systems and revisit our marketing strategies, our end goal will remain relatively stable.

We’ve discovered that having a clear sense of direction that employees understand and can align themselves with is a great strategy when it comes to engaging employees.

We encourage you to consider what “beach” you’re headed to and how you’re planning to get there.