Skills Companies should Adopt to Succeed Once in a while, change something, switch it up
By Hendrick Lee
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Understanding skills and attributes are necessary for anyone seeking to pursue a career in the industry. Here are few insights that a company — big or small — can benefit from.
Associate with People of High Integrity, High Ambition, and High Intelligence: This can be something to be used for people you surround yourselves with—from partners to new employees, to investors and founders. Being surrounded by people with high values push you to always keep improving and learning, keep your business and co-workers sharp, focused and driven to be more efficient, creative and innovative.
Create a Global Environment that Fosters Growth, Creativity, and Effectiveness: This is a focus that should be on-going, particularly as you hire new people and expand the firm. It is important to be aware of the environment you have created for your business and how it can be improved to motivate and excite your employees everyday. An important step towards achieving this is to spend time working with everyone on the team. Collaborate. Work together to understand what is needed to make a better and more conducive environment, and appreciate your co-workers and your space.
Record your Ideas and Thoughts: By recording your thoughts and ideas, it makes it easier for you to analyse, critique and improve them. If they are written down, you are given the time, space and focus to truly examine and sharpen them. Make them the best that they can be. Also, on a slightly larger scale, you could do a company-wide book debrief on how your team executes ideas and goals. It is also something that could benefit the whole company and become a valuable reflective process.
A Healthy Body Leads to a Healthy Mind: It is very easy to spend entire days, weeks, and maybe even months without doing much physical activity — sitting in a chair at a desk, sitting in a car or a train, or even sitting on a plane. There are days when the most you may walk is to the coffee machine or the bathroom. However, it is important to remember that a healthy and active body equals to a healthy and productive mind. A great idea to break up the working day could be to go to the gym with your co-workers for a meeting, or take some time off from your lunch break to stretch. You don't have to take chunks out of your free time to stay healthy; little walks and some stretching is good enough.
Making Time for Family and Friends: Probably the most important point—both for your professional and personal life—is spending more quality time with friends and family. It is easy to become too focused on networking and friend-making, but without the counterpoint of either family or friends and the separation of personal and professional life, it is easy to get lost in the rat race. Not taking some personal time off can result in a single-minded obsession to "beat the competitors", "raise a bigger fund", or "be in the best deal". But, simply trying to play the same game as everyone else is a fool's errand, and you end up lagging behind. Take a break, relax and come back refreshed, rejuvenated and be more productive than ever; your company will thank you for it.
Overall, it is important to take the time to reflect on your present work routine and find ways to improve it. Everyone is different and so are their working styles, but every once in a while, change something, switch it up — you, your employees, clients, and business will only benefit.
