All life on earth exists because of overlapping interdependent ecosystems. An ecosystem can also be described as a bubble of life. For organizations to truly be full of life, fueling creativity, driving innovation and profitability, they need to be fostered and grown as bubbles of life. Does your organization feel like a bubble of life?
Assess Your Impact
Leaders should ask themselves, “What is my impact? How leaders show up inside their organization leaks out. It is felt by clients, partners, vendors and those who come in contact with the company s brand, whether that be the products, employees or physical location(s).
Regardless of the type of leader you are or the type of business you run, what remains the same is human nature. We all want and need to be seen, heard, understood, valued, cared for and empowered.
Foster Innovation and Creativity
Our organizations should look like a diverse community of people engaged together to innovate, including in how work is done, the products and services that are brought to market and how they are marketed, the way employees are empowered to show up and how they profit from their contributions, the way we interact with the community and the physical world around us, and so much more. Leaders should consistently be accountable for their impact and contribution, remembering that they are meant to operate as part of an ecosystem.
If innovation and creativity are stagnant in an organization, it is likely that revenue, influence and reach, and customer and employee retention are as well. The core problem is likely to be a regimented culture, strict hierarchy and a lack of diversity especially within leadership.
A Citibank study in 2020 showed that the American economy lost out on $16 trillion in economic gains because of a lack of diversity so we know that a lack of diversity is bad business, full stop. Diversity is not hiring a few people of differing genders, skin colors, abilities or ethnicities, checking the box and moving forward with business as usual.
Truly understanding diversity and what it takes to support it, is to take a step back and understand ecosystems. We need to shift how we view organizations and understand that they need to function more like communities rather than strict hierarchies with a lonely leader or leaders at the top isolated from understanding the impact of their actions on the people being impacted.
National Geographic defines an ecosystem as a geographic area where plants, animals and other organisms, as well as weather and landscape, work together to form a bubble of life. What if we as leaders strove to create a bubble of life? And what if, in that environment, innovation and exponential profitability were inevitable? It’s like leadership is the landscape and the weather.
Good Leadership is the Foundation
Leaders create the central foundational vision and the support for their people to fulfill that vision, consistently contributing to their people s thriving so their people, in turn, can contribute to that organization’s thriving. Leadership also drives culture, aka the weather.
The professional services industry, over the last few years especially, has experienced some of the worst turnover rates of any office-based industry. This begs reevaluation of leadership and culture, as uncomfortable as that might be. It can’t be more uncomfortable than losing clients and market share and potentially having to close the doors.
Good leaders recognize the value of every person in the organization as an essential part of an ecosystem, continually invest in honoring them and, in doing so, are a consistent and active part of the success of that ecosystem as a whole.