Amazing Stat: 92% of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies believe that a dynamic, engaging culture is the most important factor in the long-term value of their company. 15% of those same CEOs believe their culture is where it needs to be in order to create that kind of value!
Is there truly a magical ingredient that can transform your culture, your team’s consistent level of engagement, and your bottom line? Surely, such an elixir must be a fantasy. It could not be so simple, so strikingly clear, and so unassailably true for it not to be front and center in business today! It couldn’t be… could it?
So, What Is This Magical Ingredient?
KINDNESS
Getting to the Heart of the Mystery
By building or rebuilding your culture around kindness, you can produce these kinds of actual, measurable results:
- 901% stock price growth (ROI) over 11 years for organizations that focused on this ingredient in their cultures (vs 74% for those organization that did not over the same 11 years!)
- Turnover reduction/employee retention… The AVERAGE annual turnover in the Quick Service Food industry is 170%. The two companies that constantly focus on our magic ingredient more than any other in their cultures average 14% and 24% annual turnover. In other words, these two companies retain their employees 10 times more than
- Maximizing your success in providing the ultimate buying experience for your clients, customers, or patients… According to an exhaustive study by McKinsey, 70% of the buying experience is based upon this ingredient!
- In the past five years, the brand attributes that have become increasingly crucial to buyers are:
- Socially responsible: 63% increase
- Friendly service: 148% increase
- Our magic ingredient: 391% increase
- Profitability: In the challenging and volatile airline industry, one company has delivered 46 consecutive years of profitability, has had zero layoffs or wage decreases, and averages 3% annual turnover. It is the one company in the industry most known and focused on our magical ingredient at the heart of their special culture.
It All Comes Down to Kindness!
These stunning statistics prove beyond any doubt that instilling kindness into the core of an engaging culture is paramount to profitability, service quality, talent retention, and consistent business success. It IS the magic ingredient, the elixir of excellence! So, here’s the trillion-dollar question: Why haven’t more organizations jumped on this opportunity and made the effort and commitment to elevate kindness to the top of their values and to integrate it into the fabric of their culture? It’s right there in front of them.
First, we must breakthrough generations of conditioning about kindness. Until organizations, and especially their top leaders, reject and replace the old misleading conditioning about kindness, they will remain blind to its extraordinary potential. The truth is, though virtually everyone thinks of kindness a ‘good thing,’ in business it has much more often been viewed as ‘soft’, ‘weak,’ and ‘ineffective.’ We’ve been conditioned to see kindness as the antithesis of the toughness and ruthlessness much more often prized in the business world as vital to gaining power and profits. “Nice guys finish last.” “Only the strong survive in the dog-eat-dog world of business.”
Success in business today is about Empower rather than power, WE GO rather than ego. The real and lasting competitive advantage today is one thing and one thing alone: An extraordinary level of employee engagement and a dynamic connecting culture that ignites and sustains such engagement. And, as we’ve already revealed, kindness more than any other factor generates this kind of successful culture.