{"id":3812,"date":"2022-01-31T15:10:43","date_gmt":"2022-01-31T14:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/driving-the-wow\/"},"modified":"2024-04-19T14:32:32","modified_gmt":"2024-04-19T12:32:32","slug":"driving-the-wow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/driving-the-wow\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeking out the 10% that will drive the \u2018wow&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>We\u2019ve all heard the phrase \u2018when the stars are aligned\u2019 and in business that means when your unity of purpose is clear and bright. It\u2019s time to rediscover the joy and power of your original vision.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We all know what it\u2019s like to have a brilliant idea, especially if it results in a successful start-up. Like watching a shooting star blazing across the sky, it\u2019s easy to get swept along with the sparkle and the stardust, assuming that everyone watching is as passionate as you are. But in business, as you\u2019ve probably discovered, you need more than passion and hard work; you need a <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">unified<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> unwavering higher purpose \u2013 your own so-called \u2018North Star\u2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With the ripples of the pandemic still being felt across the globe, it\u2019s becoming obvious that to survive and thrive in 2022 companies need to adapt and transform to bolster their resilience and one of the important steps on that journey is knowing who you are, what you do and what you\u2019re uniquely good at.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-3344 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Screenshot-2022-01-31-at-19.05.34.png\" alt=\"Wyseminds: making your purpose clear and bright\" width=\"492\" height=\"287\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>How is <i>your<\/i><\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong> company making a difference?<\/strong> Of course, you may feel as if everyone is already doing something important towards your unique picture but perhaps, to gain the needed resilience, it\u2019s time to ask some different questions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And while many bright ideas are indeed plucked out of the firmament, to cultivate them into successful organisations, we can also take our inspiration from the earth. Like our gardens or window boxes, in our companies we must nurture growth and understand that sometimes we have to take tough decisions and prune deadwood or weed out what (and who) we no longer need. Occasionally even uprooting or replanting is required but, crucially, all the gardeners must be working together towards the same goal \u2013 creating a unique, flourishing enterprise.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This unified connection to inspire through the power of shared values and purpose was once eloquently explained to me in a chance meeting on a plane. My neighbouring traveller, an expert in logistics, worked \u2013 coincidentally \u2013 for a global florist and for an hour we enjoyed a robust discussion about the far-reaching challenges faced by an international conglomerate, from price, profitability and cost to communication and ensuring the quality of a unique brand. He felt that over time, without clarity of understanding of what was truly important about the brand and kept it special, it was easy for the business to lose its connection to purpose&#8230; Through an increasing lack of alignment it was losing its competitive advantage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The words that stayed with me after this exchange were: this alignment builds the resilience you need to grow and stay unique in the future, and as I returned to my role leading the early stage opening of Specsavers in the Netherlands I realised the questions I should be asking were indeed different. How aligned were we as a company and could any misalignment become a block to growth as we rapidly expanded?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3338 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/shutterstock_1016488930-scaled-1.jpg\" alt=\"Wyseminds: making your purpose clear and bright\" width=\"409\" height=\"272\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, inspired by my flight companion\u2019s challenge, 900 professionals; partners, store and support staff, were re-onboarded with individual bouquets of flowers, which I asked them to order according to certain criteria. This allowed us to compare the bouquets and analyse a number of factors and whether we could see whether they lived up to their company\u2019s purpose. They did, in so far that they were lovely to receive, but it was obvious as group by group we discussed where unity of the brand was lacking, either in the flowers themselves or other small details that should have made them unique. They were missing that elusive 10% that unites to bring power to purpose. In turn it helped us reevaluate our own values and our individual contributions and the importance of a united picture, with a wow factor of course.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As that champion of sparkle and stardust, Roy E. Disney once said: <strong>\u2018When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier.\u2019<\/strong> To which I would add: <strong>feel the earth beneath your feet and fix your sights firmly on your North Star; by its guiding light, the magic really will happen.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1683 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/round_edges-e1616418396928.png\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 246px) 100vw, 246px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/round_edges-e1616418396928.png 7193w, https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/round_edges-e1616418396928-300x213.png 300w, https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/round_edges-e1616418396928-1024x727.png 1024w, https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/round_edges-e1616418396928-768x545.png 768w, https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/round_edges-e1616418396928-1536x1090.png 1536w, https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/round_edges-e1616418396928-2048x1454.png 2048w, https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/round_edges-e1616418396928.png 1440w\" alt=\"Julie Perkins Wyseminds\" width=\"246\" height=\"175\" \/><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"\"><strong>Join Julie for a virtual coffee<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>If you would like to discuss your North Star and how to bring power to your purpose, feel free to contact me for a <a href=\"https:\/\/calendly.com\/wyseminds\/virtual-coffee-session\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">virtual coffee<\/a>. Alternatively, Wyseminds has a training programme to support you to begin this journey \u2013 you can find out more <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wyseminds.com\/yourjourney\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019ve all heard the phrase \u2018when the stars are aligned\u2019 and in business that means when your unity of purpose is clear and bright. It\u2019s time to rediscover the joy and power of your original vision. We all know what it\u2019s like to have a brilliant idea, especially if it results in a successful start-up. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[60,36,37,71,40,123],"class_list":["post-3812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-business-growth","tag-entrepreneur","tag-female-entrepreneur","tag-freedom","tag-julie-perkins","tag-specsavers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3815,"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3812\/revisions\/3815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}