As an executive or owner, you are always thinking about the big picture. How do we have to change our strategy or business model? How are we going to hit our 5 year goals? How are we driving growth?
Your employees, however, typically aren’t thinking this way. They are focusing on day-to-day, short term projects and deadlines. These tasks can often become unfulfilling, which may cause your business to suffer.
This article will help you implement big picture thinking across your teams. Just as Larry Ellison said, it’s important to “see things in the present, even if they are in the future.”
The Benefits of Thinking Big Picture
Boost engagement
Big picture thinking will give important context to seemingly unimportant tasks. Employees will care about their contributions to something bigger, motivating them to engage with their colleagues and projects.
Increase productivity
Encouraging your team to think big picture will motivate them to achieve company goals by increasing their productivity and optimizing their time management.
Improve employee/employer relationship
If employees understand the company vision it will help create a healthy work environment and build employer trust by providing insight into your motivations and goals.
Lower turnover
Promoting big picture thinking will prevent uninspired employees from looking outside your company for fulfillment, lowering turnover and its negative impact on your bottom line.
5 Ways to get Employees Thinking Big Picture
Share your vision
As a business, it’s important to have an overall vision. What is your dream for the company? Try turning this dream into a brief vision statement to make it easy to communicate. For example, Guusto’s vision statement is to ‘Become the industry leader in employee recognition programs, and one of the largest donors to clean water projects’.
To craft your vision statement, think about where you want your company to be in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, and so on. Why was it founded in the first place?
The next step is to communicate this vision wherever possible. Put it up on the office wall, integrate it into your selection process and on-boarding, use it to frame performance reviews. Every member of your team should know what your company vision is so they know what they are working towards.
Help your team refocus and collaborate by sharing updates regarding the company vision in team meetings. This may include changes in this end goal or any progress that has been made as a team.
Share your company goals
Another way to encourage long term thinking in your office is by continuously sharing your team and company goals. These can be less significant medium-term goals or important long-term projects. Examples include: big clients that your sales team is hoping to land, new revenue streams that you are pursuing, or customer satisfaction improvements.
Including your employees in setting and achieving goals is a great way to motivate them to be more productive and involved at work. It also gives meaning to their current tasks and helps them to understand one another’s goals and challenges.
Pick a ‘north star’ metric to measure progress
Measurable goals are proven to be more effective than vague ones. Take a page from AirBnB’s book by picking one significant ‘north star’ metric to track your company’s goal progress. Pick a metric that is simple and a direct indicator of your company’s growth, such as nights booked for AirBnB or gifts sent here at Guusto!
Share this number with your Team as it grows to show them how their work is contributing to success.
Provide context to encourage ownership of projects
Help your employees see the bigger picture by sharing your road map with them and explaining how they are contributing to progress on that map. After providing this context, assign ownership of each project to a specific employee so that they understand their role in the success of the organization and are accountable for their results. Taking this step will motivate your team to be productive and help increase their job satisfaction.
Moreover, this method is great for encouraging your team members to take on more responsibility. By showing them how their current work is driving success, you create a space to offer opportunities for them to contribute even more. This will align their priorities with company goals.
Communicate value
In a perfect world, what’s important to you would automatically be just as important to your employees. However, in real life, it’s important to communicate the “why” to your people. Why is accomplishing this company goal beneficial for your employees? What value are they getting out of it?
For every company goal, be sure to effectively communicate the attached employee benefit. Here is a straight forward example:
Company goal: Double revenue by 2024
Employee benefit of achieving this goal: Increased salary by 10%
This method aligns your employees’ motivations with your business’ aspirations.
Reward goal progress
Motivate your employees to think long term and work towards accomplishing your business goals by rewarding their progress.
New to employee reward programs? We’ve got you covered. Using Guusto's employee recognition software is a great way to easily send gifts to your team members to recognize achievements, reward goal progress, and celebrate project milestones.
Wondering how you can build a recognition program that focuses on your company's long-term goals? Hit the button below to chat with us, and we'll show you how.
What’s Next?
It can be difficult to consistently keep your employees loyal, invested and accountable. So next week, we’ll explore - 9 Ways to Empower Employees to Own Challenges. It will cover the following in detail:
- What is employee empowerment
- The benefits of empowering employees
- How to empower employees
Hope you’ll join us for the discussion. Have something you want to learn more about? Let me know in the comments below or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Muucho Guusto :)
Skai