Screw resolutions, success lies in a blueprint.

I’ve no time for resolutions. As of last July I’m a blueprint woman. Resolutions, ugh. I’m not going to bore you with the same old information that you already know about these elusive January living creatures. What are you going to do if you don’t achieve them in January? Wait a whole year to begin again?

But a company blueprint, well now you’re talking the language of success. Whilst a blueprint may involve a week or indeed the entirety of January to start getting together, an all encompassing map of where you want your company to be and goals to achieve within that journey is utterly essential. It’s there to be adhered to where possible, changed when needed but always worked towards.

A clear vision of leadership has to be apparent within the company structure to be able to action this but it’s worth its weight in gold when focusing teams. At WNDYR our CEO, CMO and COO sat down and worked like crazy in July to produce our blueprint. Instantly, questions were answered across the board of the company on how the different sections interlinked and why they were advantageous to mesh together. Our roles were defined and any illusions quashed through a thorough briefing and Q&A session with each member of the team.

We refer to it every week. Successes within each sector can then be held up against it and shown how they’ve moved that area towards the end goal. It’s brought clarity and inspiration.

Can a mantra still be enough?

I’m going to argue no on this one.

Buddhists traditionally found mantras to have a sacred utterance when repeated. Mantras saturate our world at the moment, we see them every day on every form of social media. Yes when you wake up, look at one, if you feel down look at another, but in terms of adding value to your company’s bottom line ask yourself: who are they really for?

Nine times out of ten a company mantra is devised to inspire trust and engage potential customers with the brand’s motivation, with the potential for inspiring its employees as a secondary priority. In the meantime they’ve been plastered on the walls of offices worldwide in a bid to bring an emotive connection to an otherwise soulless environment.

Whilst potentially giving inspiration for a second, an employee dealing with a complex decision needs more focus than a pie in the sky sentence; they need a reason, an outcome to work towards. So instead of insisting that your staff members’ simply follow a mantra when making their decisions which can be lost in the every day business of being in business, a blueprint reaffirms the reasons behind their decision making process and why they need to action their role in order to ensure that the overall company is performing. It creates accountability and opens up the opportunity for them to fine tune their processes of work to enable them to add specific value to the respective company’s bottom line. Ergo leaders have a cleaner and clearer means of tracking attitudes and flagging up issues within their teams, if their communication methods are in place of course…but that’s another article.

For now, make 2016 the year of the blueprint. Take the time to devise and implement it with the leaders of the company and ensure that it is conveyed and understood by your workforce. Put it up on a screen which can be turned off when visitors come if you want it to remain private. But make sure that you do it and update your staff mantra to pertain to it.

I can share my mantra this year with you, it’s: what are you going to do today to bring you closer to achieving success on the blueprint?