Rethinking your business growth in the year of the Great Resignation
4 ways to reimagine and renegotiate growth in 2022
It’s that time (already). When leaders start casting more than a sneaky glance at business growth planning strategies for the coming year.
For many leaders, 2021 has been a bit of an anticlimax. The promised land of post-Covid-business a mirage doing a tantalizing dance on the horizon before evaporating as we draw nearer.
Manufacturers and retailers are still wrestling with global supply chains ravaged by Covid. (Ask about the possibility of getting a new mountain bike in North Vancouver and watch bike shop owners deteriorate into one of those devastating laugh-cries.)
And the professional and service sectors are either desperately applying balm to a burned-out workforce, or observing the economy of talent step through a wormhole. Often both. As Covid sparked a reimagination of the workplace (and work in general, really), we can’t decide if there’s talent everywhere or nowhere. All we know is that if we’re not careful, it won’t be where we left it.
Shuffling toward business growth and success
The ‘Great Resignation’. The ‘Turnover Tsunami’. Grand names connoting the mother of all employment reshuffles. In short, people en masse are rethinking their relationship with work, and with that, their place of work. A self-fulfilling prophecy? Maybe, but if so, it’s feeling very fulfilled right now. Last month a record 4.4 million people quit their jobs in the US (nearly 3% of the total workforce).
I likely don’t need to tell you it’s a big deal. Alongside the logistics of moving large metal boxes full of goods around the world, this employment reshuffle will be a defining feature of growth and success for most companies over the next year. Finally the old adage of culture eating strategy for breakfast can be scraped off the plate with the uneaten eggs and bacon. In 2022, culture is business strategy.
So we prefer to call this phenomenon something else: the Great Renegotiation.
As much as LinkedIn may have you believing that everyone is leaving their jobs to hone their yoga practice (maybe that’s just my LinkedIn?) the reality is, people need to work. Not everyone is leaving... their employment status is just up in the air right now, and what goes up must come down.
That journey up and down is the renegotiation of what meaningful work looks like, of what growth and success mean, and of the experience of work that delivers mutual value for company and employee.
As a culture-nerd, I’m watching this like a meaty season finale. Because this grand reshuffle has the potential to reconnect people with the work they love to do, and the ways they love to work. And to jolt leaders into realizing that whether the right people land with you depends almost entirely on your culture and your leadership.
And given that your business growth strategies for next year likely hinge on great people doing great work, I trust that you’re looking at your strategic planning a little differently. If you didn’t do that last year, it really is time now. Because before there can be renegotiation, there must be reimagination.
Reimagining your growth path
Here are 4 ways to build both reimagination and renegotiation into your 2022 business growth plans. Get ready to have culture and strategy cuddling up like young lovers in a cinema seat and set yourself up to land – and keep – the right people to drive the growth you want to see.
1. Reimagine business success.
Out of curiosity I Googled to see what is trending in strategy planning. I was met by a barrage of mega-consultancies promising to bridge the gap between strategy and execution. Almost none of them spoke about the gap between vision and strategy.
Strategy is how you’ll get from A to B. In a world that has dramatically changed, chances are B is not what or where you thought it was. How many ‘back to the office’ plans have been red-lined recently? Who was hurriedly cramming DEI into their priorities halfway through this year?
It’s time to ask the big questions now – to relocate B, or better yet discover C. What does growth mean to you next year? How will you measure success? (More on that here).
Not only might this set you on a more relevant course, it will sprinkle some meaning and inspiration into your plans that are vitamins for engagement and attraction. One of our clients is a firm of expert advisors on sustainability in the built environment, and their team is exhausted. Growth became a dirty word; it just meant more work at a time when no one felt they had that to give. Now they are rethinking what growth means for them – as a company and as individuals. And it’s beginning to reseed belief that growth is even possible.
2. Think holistically about your growth.
As you’re thinking about growth, and measuring success, force yourself to think holistically about it. We use three lenses with clients to help simultaneously constrain and expand their thinking so that critical elements of growth don’t get overlooked.
How You Measure Success - Impact, Joy, Profit
Leaders have a tendency to favour one lens over the others. Corporations (especially listed ones) have a habit of promoting ‘profit’ at the expense of ‘impact’ and ‘joy’. Non-profits suffer from what we call ‘impact anxiety’, promoting impact above all else - often strangling investment or developing toxic cultures despite being in service of noble purpose.
So here’s something to try: for each lens, think about the outcomes you want to see 3 years from now. Like a mini-vision in each area. Then ask what are the shifts you’ll need to make to get there. Now think about the end of next year. Where will you be by then, and what do you need to focus on for the next 12 months.
3. Set a context for your strategy.
If the strategy is the sheet music, the context defines how you want to play it. Are you shredding or are you plucking? Why bother with this? Because it helps you manage the energy of the organization - and your own energy as a leader. If you are staring at a languishing workforce, a context of ‘exponential growth’ will probably precipitate your own personal great resignation.
Context for how you want growth to feel
One of my clients – an incredibly inspiring non-profit news organization – just set their context as ‘joyfully riding the unicorn together’. An appetizing shift from the current context of ‘dragged behind the beautiful horse’. It invites them to look at their strategy and ask whether they are setting themselves up for a breezy canter or a bone-rattling gallop. It causes them to prioritize creating foundation, to help them get back in control of their bolting steed. It reassures a team of flagging journalists that their joy and wellbeing is way up there on the list.
So, ask yourselves; how do you want growth to feel next year? Reflect on what it feels like now, and check your strategy again to make sure it’s aligned.
4. Prioritize meaningful experience.
This coming year, the up-down of the Great Renegotiation will be won on impact and joy. Yes people will move for bigger paychecks, but it takes a whole lot more paycheck to prise a person who believes they are doing meaningful work out of their seat. In fact, 9 out of 10 people would take a pay cut for a more meaningful job.
We’ve written plenty about how to go about reimagining your employee experience here, here, here and here, because that will be so central to the Great Renegotiation. This year make your business growth planning a meaningful experience in itself. Fight the urge to lock the Exec in a room until the PowerPoint is primped. Ask your people what growth means for them next year, and how they’d like it to feel. As your strategy begins to take shape, ask them where they have energy to drive it.
This approach is drawn from Within’s Blueprint for a culture that drives purposeful growth. It’s designed to help leaders create cultures where people love what they do and who they are. In the year of the Great Renegotiation - and from this point forward really - I believe it’s the thinking that will drive meaningful growth in business.