Can your new hire own the business?
At the dark end of a quiet driveway on a spring evening—way past my childhood bedtime—I witnessed the winsome magic of passionate creating for a purpose.
Dad was a woodworker who retreated most weekday evenings to his woodshop. There, he created all manner of tables and cabinets made of exotic wood. Early one evening, his friend Tom stopped by, and they started on an epic evening’s journey of doing what they did best for the church to which our families belonged. They were part of the education committee, but, in truth, both men loved building more than books and organizing, and they found a way to meet people’s needs practically.
They built stuff.
By 7 pm, they had honed their plan. By 7:30 pm, they were fixing each wooden chassis with high-end, well-oiled casters. By 8 pm, they were fitting together the plywood sides of the cabinets. By 9 pm, as the twilight turned to warm darkness, their plan had become an assembly line. As each cabinet came off the line, I wheeled it out to form a queue of cabinets stretching away from the garage lights and out to the end of the driveway, where the neighborhood slipped silently toward slumber.
They produced dozens of small, mobile cabinets that would each hold the needed papers and books and could move with the class. Looking back from the end of the darkened drive toward the well-lit circle of saws buzzing, drills whining, and hammers pounding, it was like a mini-factory had landed and was running at full capacity in a quiet neighborhood.
The revealing job description
This childhood fragment often comes to mind when clients talk about partnership. One client recently wrote up her expectations about partners. She was looking for a curious person who could generate messaging and content ideas and use the latest tools to analyze engagement. For example, writing social media posts and gauging their impact on organic traffic to the company site. She wanted a person capable of taking on the responsibility of overseeing the entire communication lifecycle.
In my mind, I summed up her description by thinking she wanted to hire a partner who would “own the business.” Not literally, but metaphorically. People who own the business take responsibility for pulling scattered thoughts, intentions, and goals into solid messaging and strategic next steps. It is a sense of ownership that causes someone to see a need and act toward meeting it, much like Dad and Tom getting busy creating an assembly line on a summer workday evening when they both had work the next day.
Both responsible and free
If I own the business (whether literally or metaphorically), I am responsible for helping that business move forward. And I am free to take steps to help that business move forward. It’s both. Responsibility without the freedom to act is frustrating and will limit what the business can do.
As clients, directors, and managers talk about their high goals for the partners they hire, I am particularly impressed by those who let their creatives run free. Our treasured and longest-lasting client relationships are with those who grant us a sense of ownership for our shared goals. These clients then call for our best work. For instance, we have clients who need a certain kind of storytelling for an audience wanting enough detail to engage a scientist, but they also need a grand sweep of the narrative to keep pulling them forward.
We hope that as fully responsible partners, we can have the freedom to build a small content factory that is busy creating precisely the right stories to transport the messaging of our clients.
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What story cabinets can Livingston Communication help you build? Talk to us.