People are at the heart of any business, from suppliers to customers and staff. Your ability to read and work with people – and to get what you need out of them to move the business forward is critical to your business growth.
In this Podcast of The Money Show Pavlo Phitidis outlines his approach to getting the most out of people to achieve your vision of the business.
There are three people or kinds of people you have to understand to harness their ability to build your business.
The starting point is understanding yourself
- Self-awareness is an important part of career development, and even more so for your business to know where you are going, as a business forces you to look objectively and adjust. Examining strengths, weaknesses, accomplishments, and failures from the past can help you to move forward with re-energized objectives, which helps with vision alignment for your business, whether it is in the hiring process or having composed company goals with the people you share the vision with. There are always trials and tribulations, but when the whole business is aligned to the goal you have, it becomes easier to achieve beyond measure.
Next, understand your customer
- In a world where everything in business is customer-centric, knowing your customer is critical, whether you work in a B2B or B2C organisation.
To get this right you have to listen to your customer – you cannot sell to them on the assumption or hope that they are interested in what you are telling them.
Understanding your customer will help you to be more clear and focused in what you do for them. It is always important to know precisely who you serve, what you serve them and how you serve them. You cannot be everything to everyone.
Then understand your employees
- In hiring new people, you need to be at a point where you have understood your business and you have a good sense of what kind of personality fits within your business. Having a good sense of your own values and the values of the company you are building is important. You need to hire on the back of that discussion. And that is not an interview that needs to be a social engagement.
“When it comes to employing additional staff, you must have a strong understanding of your business and a real vision of what sort of personality suits it. It is critical to understand your own values as well as the values of the company you’re building. To the extent that you can get birds of a feather to flock together, you can coordinate, simplify, and scale”.
