Context

Why am I here?

I am sure you have asked yourself that question at least once in life. But I am also sure that you have asked yourself that question also at one or another company.

Do you remember how you felt when you asked yourself that question? Probably the answer isn’t “Great!”

Humans need direction — they need to know why they are doing something. If you are doing something totally repetitive and don’t understand why, the quality of your work will decrease.

But it also works in the other direction: The better an employee understands why they are doing a task, the better they can do their job.

This is the context. And as a leader, it’s your job to a) provide that context and b) to make sure everybody understands it.

In many companies, it’s the default to send strategy presentations to employees and discuss the strategy in huge all-hands meetings — but then never validate if someone understood the strategy.

So, not only make sure that the context and strategy is available, but also take the time to make sure everybody understands the companies goals without the help of their manager or the CEO.

We will dive deeper into this in another part, but as a rule of thumb: People need to understand what is the vision and the mission of the organization. If this is transparent and your employees know who their customer is and what problem the customer has, you are already on a good way.

This increases productivity, but also the identification with the company.