Part 1 -What is the Power to ACT?

CEO’s often are frustrated by how slowly their business seems to move.  They feel mired down, trudging through the day-to-day actions, never really feeling like they’re gaining momentum or propelling the organization in a tangible way. You get too involved in the business to actually run it! That might only make sense to those of us who have been there.

When you go into business, you do so because you have a passion for your products, services or customers, not really because you know a lot about taxes, leadership and employee engagement. So, you try to find the balance between your drive to be effective and the necessity to be the leader you read about in every other Fast Co article. Should you be more invested in your bottom line, or your company culture? Is there a balance?

The Power to ACT is a philosophy that we have adopted here at Volano. We find that making accountability, collaboration and transparency pillars of our organization helps us organically strike that balance between propelling business (getting things done) and building a healthy company culture, focused on engagement.

Accountability, Collaboration, Transparency

Accountability

There is an intensely gratifying peace that comes with knowing expectations are being met, but it’s very hard for most leaders to let go and empower. That’s pretty natural actually; this is your organization, your success on the line. Without instilling a culture of accountability, we see bottlenecks to progress and roadblocks in communication. You can put your effort towards to controlling everything, or you can put your efforts toward building and empowering a capable workforce.

Collaboration

Every business leader, trained or not, knows that collaboration is a building block of success. That’s why every quarter or so you’ll implement a new project management app…the last one just didn’t have what you needed, right? Well neither will this one, or the next if collaboration isn’t part of your culture, and fostered by leaders. Get out of the inbox and the fourth project management app and engage in real information sharing.

Transparency

When accountability and collaboration are an intrinsic part of any company culture, something fantastic happens, and it’s called transparency. Walls come down, big picture goals come front and center, clarity and context are part of every moving piece of the organization.
The Power to ACT has been very impactful in our organization. We now understand how thoughtful, purposeful leadership can drive success, while fostering a healthy, effective work environment. Please head back to the Volano blog every Thursday in April for the rest of the series as we cover each pillar of the Power to ACT.