Years ago, John Fairclough challenged his company, Resicom, to “become the company that we sell.” Recently, John taught The Junto Institute’s class on self-awareness, and threw down the same challenge to the Junto companies.
“Become the company that you sell.”
This phrase stuck with the Junto II CEOs, since many of them listed it as a key takeaway from class. John urged the class to see self-awareness not as just a personal endeavor, but something to practice as a company. Organizational awareness is acknowledging if there’s a difference between what’s advertised and what’s really going on within company walls.
A company can’t claim to be aware if it boasts a thriving culture to job candidates, but behind closed doors the leadership complains about toxic employees. Transparency and teamwork can be central values sold to customers, but how can that be delivered on, if back at the office employees regularly experience miscommunication and disorganization?
John stressed that becoming the company that you sell is all about aligning statements with standards, and this is the difference between an efficient growth company and a stagnant business about to crumble.
Awareness is powerful practice and it’s not just a personal thing. Companies and people alike can grow and improve by aligning who they say they are with who they actually are.
***
Postscript
Two lessons learned for us at The Junto Institute:
-
Emotional intelligence (EI) is typically thought of in the context of individuals and, for us in particular, the leadership of growth companies. What we learned from this class is it’s not just individuals or leadership but a company that can become emotionally intelligent.
- In the interest of streamlining our curriculum, we seriously considered the prospect of eliminating the EI classes from the 10-month program. After seeing how well this class was received as the first EI topic, we can’t imagine the program without it.
