Make people care about your business to achieve great results

Whether you are a senior leader, startup founder or an executive in a large organization, it’s often hard to communicate convoluted strategies, complex business models and financial underpinnings of the business to everyone in a way they understand and remember. It’s even harder to get everyone to care about moving the business forward.

When it comes to communicating complicated messages, think as if you are delivering the message to the most junior person in the room.

It’s because if the junior person gets it, others will get it too, and who doesn’t appreciate a simple message?

Your company’s vision and how that vision adds meaning to people’s day-2-day work life is one of the core messages to make people care. The starting point is to talk about business in its most simplistic form without sounding condescending. E.g. we generate revenue by selling a product X or a service Y at a price that makes a good profit on those sales.

How much expense is required to produce a dollar?

The answer to this simple question builds empathy and alignment within the business. Your employees won’t see business as an open checkbook.

You can also use the same analogy to remind team leads and managers to keep expenses and hires under control. They must demonstrate how every new hire will be able to make a difference to the bottom line in real dollar value.

As Louis Gerstner says,

An organization is nothing more than the collective intelligence of its people to create value.

That value is created by people, who are your biggest expense as well as your biggest asset.

The first step to getting the best out of people is to make them care about your business.

A small passionate team that cares about your business will provide many-fold returns compared to teams that are merely putting their skills to good use.