Building a business to last is crucial for long-term success, stability, and sustainability. This impact requires establishing a strong foundation, fostering adaptability, and cultivating a sustainable vision beyond short-term gains.

This longterm visions helps to achieve consistent customer satisfaction, navigate market changes, and builds a resilient entity that contributes positively to its stakeholders and its wider community. 

Five key factors in building a business that lasts are the company values, vision, mission, adaptability and contemporary.

💫 Values 💫

Company values guide a company's actions and decisions, it is a reflection of their beliefs and purpose.  It embeds the company culture and continuity of customer service and community care. The communication and aligned action that a business takes towards all aspects of the business.

What three words would you use to describe your business?

The three words we use to describe The Glowgetter Mentor company values are:

✨Education

✨Empowerment

✨Excellence

💫 Vision 💫

The company’s vision describes the desired future state of the organization usually focussing on a 3, 5 and 10 year timeframe. The vision is aspirational, inspirational and guides the company's strategic direction. It should be clear, concise, and inspire employees, customers and stakeholders. 

Here's a breakdown of what a company vision looks like:

✨Future-oriented:
It focuses on the long-term goals and aspirations of the company, not on the current state.

✨Aspirational:
It should be ambitious and paint a picture of what the company wants to become. 

✨Inspirational:
It should motivate employees and stakeholders to work towards a common goal. 

✨Clear and Concise:
It should be easily understood and communicated, often in a single sentence or short paragraph…. Think elevator pitch!

✨Aligned with Values:
It should reflect the company's core values and beliefs. 

Key Elements in a strong company vision focus on the:

✨Future State:
It describes the desired future state of the company, often in terms of its impact on the world or its position in the market.

✨Impact:
It outlines the positive impact the company hopes to have on its customers, community and industry. 

✨Direction:
It provides a roadmap for decision-making and strategic planning, guiding the company's efforts. 

✨Inspiration:
It should ignite passion and enthusiasm among employees and stakeholders. 

💫 Mission 💫

The company mission statement is a brief statement of the general values and principles which guide the program, department or business goals.  

Here are four essential questions your mission statement must answer:

1. Who are we?
2. What do we do?
3. Why do we do it?
4. For whom do we do it? 

💫 Fostering adaptability 💫

Foster adaptability within a company helps to cultivate a growth mindset.  It encourage continuous learning, embraces change focussing on the  opportunity, promotes open communication and collaboration. Leaders should also create a safe environment for experimentation and empower their teams to explore new methods and procedures.

Here's six ways we discuss with our Elevate the Executives to foster adaptability in their business:

💫 Cultivate a Growth Mindset:

✨ Embrace challenges as learning opportunities:
Encourage your team to see setbacks as stepping stones to improve and grow, rather than as failures. Think of ‘FAIL forward’ a First Attempt In Learning rather than thinking of lessons as failures.

✨ Promote a belief in the ability to learn and develop:
Help your team understand that their skills and intelligence can be developed through dedication and hard work. Ask them how they would like to develop in their role, another tip is to hire the team member that can fulfill a role two stages above you’re actually hiring for so that you can train them up within their journey with your business.

💫 Encourage Continuous Learning:

✨ Provide access to resources and training:
Offer opportunities for employees to learn new skills, technologies and techniques. 

 ✨How can your company add value to each team member’s career chapter within your business?

 ✨What programs or incentives would inspire your team to perform as the best version of themselves?

💫 Support experimentation and innovation:
Create an environment where employees feel comfortable trying new things and taking calculated risks. Show your support and enable them to take ownership of their actions.

💫Foster Open Communication and Collaboration:

✨ Encourage open dialogue and feedback:
Create channels for employees to share ideas, concerns and suggestions freely. There was an example of this on my recent Harvard Business Course that supported sharing ideas by celebrating the best and worst ideas each month amongst the team.  This encouraged any and all ideas to be shared with the company. In our weekly chapter meetings for our ADPi sorority at UNLV we used to have the weekly M&M award for the sister that did the silliest thing that week… it shared lessons in a friendly and open environment.

✨ Promote cross-functional collaboration:
Break down departments and cliques by encouraging teams to work together on projects which fosters diverse perspectives and further creativity.

💫 Create a Safe Environment:

✨ Psychological safety is key:
Ensure employees feel comfortable speaking up, taking risks and making mistakes without fear of judgment or reprisal. What does your company culture look like?  How can it be improved… the suggestion box mentioned above helps keep communication lines open and supports community spirit.

✨ Celebrating both success and lessons helps recognise that FAILure is a natural part of the learning process and encourage employees to learn from their mistakes… the First Attempt In Learning…

💫 Empower Leaders and Teams:

✨ Leaders should model adaptability:
Demonstrate flexibility, resilience and a willingness to learn and adapt themselves and as a company. This openness fosters a culture to elevate and continually improve with the Japanese ‘Kaizen’ philosophy.

 ✨Empower teams to make decisions:
Give teams the authority and resources they need to respond quickly to changing situations. 

💫 Embrace Change:

✨ View change as an opportunity: 

Encourage a positive attitude towards change and highlight the potential for growth and innovation. Change is inevitable and the only constant in a company.  To embrace, encourage and empower our teams to continually grow and develop creates a positive momentum for excellence.

✨ Communicate changes effectively: Clearly explain the reasons for change and how it will impact employees. The new processes and procedures also need to be clearly embedded into the company culture and customer service. By implementing these strategies, companies can build a culture of adaptability that allows them to thrive in an ever-changing environment. 

💫 Following trends 💫

Following business trends is crucial for staying competitive, adapting to market changes and meeting evolving customer needs. Staying abreast of evolution drives innovation, growth and profitability in your business. By understanding trends, businesses can anticipate consumer desires, develop relevant products and services, refine marketing strategies, make informed decisions to optimize resource allocation and improve overall performance. This builds credibility in your business and builds your brands as an expert in industry.

For example Artificial Intelligence - this is no longer a trend, it represents a shift in how we interact with technology and solve problems. 

“ Over the next decade, AI won't replace managers, but managers who use AI will replace those who don't.”

- Harvard Business Review

A widely cited Harvard Business School perspective on AI, attributed to professor Karim Lakhani who taught my Generative AI course at the Digital Data Design Institute in Harvard Business School states that "AI won't replace humans—but humans with AI will replace humans without AI".  

This quote emphasizes that AI's impact will be less about direct replacement and more about augmenting human capabilities, with individuals and organizations leveraging AI tools becoming more effective and influential than those who do not. 

Lasting businesses are built on robust foundations, including strong financial planning, comprehensive business plans and effective risk management, which help them weather economic downturns and unexpected challenges.  

By focussing on sustainability and longevity in business this encourages continuous improvement and innovation.  Thus allowing businesses to create new products and services that meet changing customer needs and stay ahead of competitors. Businesses with a long-term vision have clear goals that showcase their commitment to serving their community beyond just profitability creating a lasting legacy.

Thank you for reading, if this was useful please 🩷 and if it could help someone in your network, please share. Thank you ~ Diana x