The Foundation of the Business Excellence Journey

Skip this article if you want to build a good business. But, if you want to build a great business, then this is the foundation of all that you will do in your Business Excellence journey.
 
Without this piece which I will share in a bit, there is no heart and soul in our business. A great business is all about heart and soul; supporting our mind, body and energy to play full out. In a good business, heart and soul are buried deep inside, and work is a list of things to do instead of the joy of building magnificence in the world through our work.
 
As a business coach, this is fundamentally the most important thing I do – get people in touch with their Purpose and their Spiritual Values that bring deep fulfilment and blissfulness to their soul, and their Big Hairy Audacious Goal that engages their heart with the joy of playing the great game of business to make a massive impact through their work. Everything else on the Business Excellence journey is a piece of cake. Most leaders struggle so much with everything else that they feel that’s what is more important. But, the struggle is because the foundation is not in place. If you want to build a great organization with ease and grace, then get this piece right.
 
An organization is a living organism and has a heart and a soul, as much as each individual who is a part of this community. If each individual’s heart and soul vibrates in sync with the organization’s heart and soul, then the whole organization will move forward towards fulfilling on its shared Purpose with joyous velocity and make a massive difference as measured through its Revenue and Profitability.
 
Money is an expression of the difference we are making. No customer will give us one rupee if we are not making a difference to their lives through our products and services. You go to the market and pick up a loaf of bread and pay Rs 40/- for it. That Rs 40/- is in gratitude for the farmer having sown the grain, the baker for baking the bread, the packager for packaging the bread, the transporter for transporting the bread to the nearest retail outlet and the shop-keeper next to your house for keeping the bread for you to buy from to fulfil your need to have bread on your dining table. That Rs 40/- is for the farmer, baker, packager, transporter, shop-keeper for having been of service to you.
 
The movement of money is merely a movement of people being of service to each other. Revenue is the difference you are making to your customers. That is why the revenue your business earns is an expression of the positive impact your business is creating in the world. Grow your business revenue massively because that is a measure of your impact, the measure of the difference you are making through your business.
 
Profit is the difference you are making to your employees, business partners and all other stake holders. Greater a difference you make to your employees, business partners and all other stakeholders engaged in delivering your product / service to your customers, greater their hearts and souls would get engaged with the journey that your organization is on, greater Operational Excellence you will see your people innovatively and creatively explore, experiment and implement to reduce the effort and energy required to serve the customers at the levels they have no right to expect, resulting in higher profitability. Grow your profitability massively because that is a measure of your contribution to your people, of the difference you are making in their lives.
 
So, what is that foundation and how do we go about discovering it and implementing it?
 
The foundation of Business Excellence is Purpose, Core Values and the Big Hairy Audacious Goal.
 
The Purpose is the Why of your business, the very reason of existence of your business.
 
The Core Values is the How of your business, the rules of the great game of business you are playing, the guiding light for you and your people which will lead you and your people from good to great.
 
The Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) is the What of the business, the game you are playing to fulfil on the shared Purpose of your organization. The BHAG is a milestone on the journey to fulfil on the Shared Purpose of your organization.
 
If you can boil your business to 1 word or a phrase, that’s a Wow. Does the same word or phrase show up in your Purpose, Core values, BHAG, job-to-be-done, brand-promises, profit / x?
 
Let’s take RYD as an example:
 
Our Purpose is to support people to Have It All, and be happy, healthy and prosperous.
 
One of our Core Values is Excellence. We define this core value for ourselves as:
Excellence - I love, accept and like myself as I am right now. I love, accept and like you as you are right now. I love, accept and like life as it is right now: We play to the world’s best in what we do by learning from Masters from around the world. We actively work on all the 3 RYD Growth Levers (Leadership Depth, Craft Mastery, Business Excellence) to joyously lead ourselves and our work from good to great, realize our dreams and have it all with ease and grace; while having lots of fun and adventure along the way. We realize our highest potential to make a massive impact by living our Purpose through the work we do. Our dreams are impossible, unimaginable and crazy because that defines the growth we have committed ourselves to this Lifetime. People experience each other as extraordinary in our space.
 
Our BHAG is:
RYD 2047 - Our BHAG is to be the world’s best Transformation Ecosystem nurturing 60 Indian Businesses to be Fortune Global 100, 300 Indian Businesses to be Fortune Global 500 and 1000 Indian Businesses to be Forbes Global 2000 as Businesses we coach become Spaces of Grace for people to joyously lead themselves and their work from good to great, realize their dreams and have it all; supporting India to be the world's most developed, beautiful, greenest nation with her citizens happiest, healthiest and the most prosperous; creating a Brave New World.
 
Can you see how the phrase Have It All appears in all the 3 components of the Foundation of our Business – Purpose, Core Values, BHAG?
 
In fact, this phrase appears even in our job-to-be-done, brand-promises and profit / x. More on this in future articles.
 
Have It All creates a horizontal alignment for us on the Vision Summary, a Scaling-up tool, with it appearing in our Core Values, Purpose and Brand Promises.
 
Have It All also creates a vertical alignment for us on the Vision Summary with it appearing in our Purpose, BHAG and One year Goals.
 
Our one year Goal has the metric to measure our progress towards our BHAG and Purpose, one year at a time. This metric is Number of Businesses in which we are coaching the CEO and their Leadership Team to support them and their people to Have It All.
 
There’s another horizontal alignment in the Vision Summary between 3HAG (3 Years Highly Achievable Goal), 1HAG (1 Year Highly Achievable Goal) and Quarterly Priorities through the same metric as above. That metric is represented as X in the ratio Profit / X, where X being Number of Businesses in which we are coaching the CEO and their Leadership Team to support them and their people to Have It All.
 
Since Profit is maximized by maximizing Revenue and maximizing Operational Excellence to reduce cost of delivery, Profit is the difference we are making to our customers, employees, business partners and all stakeholders engaged in delivering our product / service to our customers.
 
If our Profit / X is the difference we are making to our customers, employees, business partners and all stakeholders per business, then our whole strategy is about making that happen.
 
Because of the above clarity, defining our Strategy becomes easier. Reminder of what is Michael Porter’s definition of Strategy – Strategy describes how a company creates a unique and valuable position through a set of differentiating actions.
 
Our unique and valuable position is: Have It All
 
Important thing to note here is that once we became clear on our Purpose, Core Values and BHAG, it gave us clarity on how to re-architect ourselves as below which becomes one part of the set of differentiating actions we are taking to create a unique and valuable position in the mind of our customers or coachees as we call them:
1. Coach one person for 100 years than coach 100 people for one year.  Why?
i. Because one Gear 5 CEO will create greater impact in the world and support more people to Have It All than 100 Gear 1 CEOs.
ii. Because to that one Leader, the quantum of impact and transformation available would be exponential.
iii. Because coaching one person deeply over 100 years is far more fulfilling for the coach because coaching to that much depth grows the coach in massive magnitude than coaching 100 coachees on the surface.
 
2. Coach one organization with CEO and their Leaders over many years than many CEOs for one year. Why?
i. Because it is way more easier for the CEO to lead themselves and their business from Good to Great when their entire leadership team is also on their good to great journey.
ii. Because Greatness is a 20 years game, not a fad of the season. It is exciting in the beginning, magnificent in the end but messy all the way through in the middle.
iii. Because it would take a significantly skilled coach high on craft mastery to journey long-term with the business they are coaching than doing short-term interventions, enabling massive growth for the RYD Coaches.
 
 
3. Coach one family than many individuals. Why?
i. Because we progress faster on our good to great journey with greater ease and grace when our spouse, siblings and other family members are also on their good to great journey.
ii. Because if both parents are on their good to great transformation journey, their children will organically and naturally start travelling their own good to great journey to have it all creating greater impact in the world with less effort.
iii. Because the coaching will be deeper and create a much bigger difference to the coachee, if the coach has context of the family that the coachee belongs to. Making a much bigger difference to the coachee is far more fulfilling for a coach as it requires the coach to learn, grow and contribute to a much greater depth and width.
 
The above strategy is not because we want to make more money. The strategy is defined to support us to fulfil on our shared Purpose and shared BHAG with greater ease, grace and velocity.
 
Revenue and profitability is the wagging of the dog’s tail. Most businesses either catch the tail and keep moving it to make it wag; or beat the dog to make it wag the tail. How is all that going to make the tail wag?
 
The only way the tail will wag on its own is to feed the dog. Feeding the dog is being of service to your customers, employees, business partners and all stakeholders. You feed the dog, the tail will automatically wag with joyous ease and grace.
 
Whenever we are struggling and working extremely hard to create results, it is because we haven’t found the tiny action to take to create the results with ease and grace.
 
How do you determine the Purpose, Core Values and BHAG of an organization which has grown without this foundation?
 
Irrespective of the age of the organization, the founder is key to this discovery and articulation. It is the founder’s purpose, founder’s spiritual values and founder’s vision of the impact they want to create in the world that will show the way to the organization’s purpose, values and BHAG. The outer reason may be wealth creation but it is never truly that.
 
If you are a second-generation business leader, spend some time with the founder understanding what makes their heart sing, their soul dance, their mind fill with the joy of creation and their energy soar passionately in the vast sky of limitless possibilities. Each human being has an intrinsic need to be a channel of impact to experience their undeniable greatness. The soul hungers for that. You would need to learn to be a minimum of a Gear 3 leader to communicate powerfully in the world of the founder to have a conversation that deeply fulfills both of you to uncover their purpose, spiritual values and BHAG.
 
If you are the founder, invest time with your coach to discover your Purpose, your spiritual Values, your 25 years Vision of the impact you want to create in the world for which your business is the structure of success.
 
Having discovered and found an experiential connection with your purpose, spiritual values and vision, it is time to touch, move and inspire your people with the reason of your existence, the difference you want to make, the future you want to create with the passion that surges through your body. You can’t fake it. You have to communicate from the depths of your heart and soul to connect with your people’s hearts and souls. That’s how Martin Luther King, Bapu Gandhi spoke and had the people of their nation fulfil on their vision, on their Purpose. To speak with the vulnerable authenticity of that energy, you need to learn to be at least a Gear 3 leader.
 
As you uncover your purpose, you have to also find an experiential linkage between what your Purpose is and what is the Purpose of your people. Lead with questions, ask them what they most want to create in this lifetime, what their Quest is and teach them that it’s in giving that we receive for them to understand that the only way to get what they want is to give to others what they want for themselves and that, then becomes their Purpose. If you are still on your journey to be a Gear 3 leader, take support from your coach for this deeply heart-warming, soul-stirring conversation.
 
Through this heart-engaging, soul-connecting conversation with your people, one group at a time, evolve a shared Purpose, shared Values and shared BHAG that heart and soul resonates with all of you.
 
The only way to have the above conversation is if you are in touch with your emotions and your spontaneity (which is opposite of anxiety).
 
Purpose, Values, BHAG are discovered in Mountain 1 (Mountain of Purpose) of the Business Excellence journey.
 
On Mountain 2 (Mountain of Value) of the Business Excellence journey, you will uncover Jobs-to-be-Done, Brand Promises and Profit / X.
 
Business Excellence journey, as all journeys are, is an iterative process. We continue to iterate forward, continuously learning, continuously evolving, continuously making a bigger difference than before. The journey of greatness is endless and is iterative.
 
The Purpose is not going to change much, nor Values, though the articulation of the same may continue to evolve as you get more clarity through your conversations with yourself and with your people.
 
Make sure your BHAG is a measure of your Purpose and has a metric to measure if you and your people are progressing towards fulfilling on your shared Purpose.
 
Purpose is a direction, your north star, and therefore you will never ever fulfil on it; though you will keep moving towards it as it guides you on the direction that you need to take.
 
How to be the Gear 3 Leader to communicate powerfully in the world of Others to create the above foundation?
 
Here are few Distinctions with respect to Communicating Powerfully in the World of Others (Gear 3 Leadership Muscle). A Distinction is a distinct point on the Ball of Perspective that give us Power to Create our Reality in alignment with our impossible, unimaginable, crazy dreams.
 
1) In Gear 1, we relate to our own self as extraordinary. In Gear 2, we relate to other people in our Space as extraordinary. It's only in Gear 3, other people begin to relate to us as extraordinary. All of us want to be in Gear 3 but to get there, one has to go through the fire of Gear 1 and Gear 2.
 
Interestingly, by the time we reach Gear 3, other people admiring us doesn't even matter anymore because we have become an empty space for other people to discover themselves; a channel of impact for people to draw from the Universe what would most serve them.
 
2) Ego is nothing but a human being's self-defense mechanism to protect oneself from the pain of one's own Hole in the Soul. Let this understanding support us to be loving kindness to all people in all our conversations because we know the pain of the Hole in our Soul.
 
3) The 3 growth levers equally exercised supports us in our good to great journey to realize our highest potential - Leadership Depth, Business Excellence and Craft Mastery. As a leader, our job is to support our people to realize their highest potential. By being clear which growth lever is not fully strengthened for our people, we can help them understand the barrier in their growth and help them build their structure of success to maximise their growth and therefore, their happiness and fulfilment.
 
4) If people are not on their good (Gear 0) to great (Gear 5) journey, they would be operating from Gear 0, from the hole in their soul. Our highest contribution to them would be to raise our consciousness to Gear 4 (Delivering on Our Word leadership muscle) which helps them to step up to Gear 1 (I am extraordinary and I love myself) in our space, helps them experience their own greatness in our space; supporting them to learn, grow and contribute much more effectively.
 
Gear 4 is the domain of Integrity. Gear 4 is also the domain in which when I say - I believe in you, you will viscerally feel my belief in you. That creates the space for you to step up to Gear 1 in my space. But, if I have broken words in our relationship, it will come in the way for me to step up to Gear 4 in our relationship. So, restoring my broken word to you supports me to step up to Gear 4 in our relationship, which is when I can look straight into your eyes and say - I believe in you; and you will experience my belief in you and relate to your own self as extraordinary at an experiential level.
 
5) Happiness and Fulfilment is an experience of growth. If we are not growing, we are dying. The highest growth available to us is in realizing our highest potential. We define and, therefore, limit our highest potential by our dream. More impossible, unimaginable, crazy our dream; more growth we have gifted ourselves this lifetime; provided we play the game to realize our dreams. Help people discover their impossible, unimaginable, crazy dream that scares them a bit because if their dream doesn't scare them, then their dream is not big enough. Support them to build a structure of success for realizing their dreams and help them to identify the first tiny step to take from their structure of success. This is a foundation for communicating powerfully in the world of others.
 
Big Hairy Audacious Goal is the impossible, unimaginable, crazy dream at an organizational level. Help people discover the linkage between their personal impossible, unimaginable, crazy dream to the organizational BHAG, and the linkage between their personal purpose to the organizational purpose to make the organizational Purpose and BHAG a part of the shared organizational consciousness owned by all people. Overtime, only those people who resonate with the shared organizational Purpose and BHAG will continue marching forth to lead the business from good to great, others will move out on their own journey some place else.
 
Lead from your heart and soul to lead yourself, your people and your business from good to great by supporting your people to realize their dreams and have it all to realize your dreams, have it all and make a massive difference to our country and the world 💜
 
Loving you,
j.

Recommended Further Reading: 
1. Building your Company's Vision by Jim Collins in Harvard Business Review
2. The 3 Laws of Performance by Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan
​3. Chapter 6 The Core in the Strategy Section of Scaling-up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't by Verne Harnish