4 Tips to Create Strong Operational Values for Your Organization

While many founders are wrapped up in the process of lifting an organization off the ground, its long-term success depends on your ability to create a powerful set of operational values.

Grooming a values-driven company requires more than just a mission statement and a handful of buzzwords on a manuscript. It involves instilling productive mindsets for maintaining workflows and optimism.

Putting these operational values in motion is what steers your company into the future. In fact, by 2020, about half of the entire global workforce will be comprised of millennials. In a lot of ways, this generation has rewritten the rulebook as to what core business values should be.

Here are four major tips to shape a high-performing operation that acquires and retains talent today.

1. Create an Ownership Mentality

One of the big observations of how company cultures have changed over the last few decades is that top-down management styles are no longer effective.

Employees today have a strong need to feel valued in order to do their best work. A great way to accomplish this is to promote a company-wide sense of ownership. This instills the idea that everyone involved has a significant stake in how projects play out.

For example, Gusto, a company specializing in HR services, prides itself on creating a culture based on an ownership mindset. They strongly believe that “owners” are passionate people who go above and beyond in everything they do, because they feel the significance of their role—no matter what it maybe—in your organization’s success.

Empowering employees is the key to unlocking a level of emotional intelligence to create a bright future. After all, a business is only as good as the team it employs.

2. Invest in Collaboration

In most businesses, especially during the rapid growth stage, it can take a while before a company figures out how to effectively streamline tasks and communication. This can be an expensive learning curve. According to Project Management Institute, for every $1 billion invested in the United States, $122 million is lost due to poor project management.

The earlier you prioritize a good project management system, the quicker you will find a rhythm for delegating tasks at an optimal rate.

Technology has given companies agile and lean resources that CEOs could only dream of 10 to 15 years ago. Workzone for example, is a platform for organizations of all backgrounds. From tiny startups all the way up to enterprises, this program offers approval flows, individual workload views, shared workspaces, gantt charts, and industry-specific project templates to identify the most efficient operational strategies and hit the ground running with them.

From the dashboard, you have a complete overview of how tasks are being completed with open communication portals to ensure nothing slips through the cracks.

3. Encourage Creativity

Regardless of your employees’ tasks, give them a portion of the day to ideate and think outside the box in order to boost morale.

Google is famous for their 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of their normal workday is for daily responsibilities. The remaining 20 percent is set aside for employees to step back and think creatively. Believe it or not, some the biggest breakthroughs in Google’s history come from this program. Gmail and AdSense were two of the big ones.

The lesson from Google’s policy? Creativity drives business success.

Adobe’s 2016 State to Create study found that creative companies increase employee productivity by 78 percent and boost happiness by 76 percent.

Ultimately, people are looking for meaning and fulfillment in their professional life, and a culture of creativity can encourage that.

4. Promote From Within

Promoting from within is perhaps the best practice to increase motivation across your staff. When you do this, you are creating a valuable “go-getter” mentality that boosts morale and improves retention rate. This operational value is especially important with millennial workers, who are prone to job-hopping. In fact, a study conducted by Glassdoor for Employees found that 46 percent of millennials left their job due to lack of career growth.

It’s no secret that the cost of turnover is detrimental to businesses. In terms of financial and cultural development, work to build a community where employees stay for the long haul.

Over to You

A strong set of operational values is the heart and soul of any company. The key to ensuring they stick is to keep them in action. However, it can be difficult to truly gauge what type of people you are working with and how they can shape the company’s efficiency, especially in a startup organization. This is why you need to be open to input and flexibility to determine a system that works for everyone. The results will spell success both internally and externally.

Pratik Dholakiya is the founder of Growfusely, a content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO. He regularly speaks at various conferences about SEO, Content Marketing, and Entrepreneurship. Pratik has spoken at the 80th Annual Conference of the Florida Public Relations Association, Accounting and Finance Show, Singapore, NextBigWhat’s UnPluggd, IIT-Bombay, SMX Israel, SEMrush Meetup, MICA, IIT-Roorkee, and other major events. As a passionate SEO and content marketer, he shares his thoughts and knowledge in publications like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, Entrepreneur Magazine, Fast Company, The Next Web, YourStory, and Inc42, to name a few. He can be found at Twitter @DholakiyaPratik.