One of the most important things I do as a business owner is to ask for help. Every day I seek out new ideas to grow and improve.  I’m very lucky to be surrounded by lots of great people and resources.  

One of the resources I’ve turned to in the past has been Business Victoria.  In 2006, I participated in Business Victoria’s My Business, My People program which helped The Physio Co take the leap from small business to something more significant. A couple of months ago the guys at Business Victoria asked me to write a monthly post for a new blog they were launching.  Knowing how much I’d gained from their program, I jumped at the chance to share my experiences and hopefully help other business owners to think, learn and grow.

My first post was called ‘The Secret to Staff Motivation’.  Here it is..

The Secret to Staff Motivation

The thought of better performance, higher sales, more fun and more profit from a motivated team warms the heart of most business owners.  But consider this: ‘if you motivate an idiot they simply do stupid things faster!’ So how on earth do you motivate your team to do what the business needs?

The answer is to create a fun and inclusive culture of people that are all aligned to achieving the same goals.   To make this happen in my business, I needed to think about motivation in a new light. You see, as a business owner, I don’t see myself as a motivator.  I’m more of an educator.  The best way I’ve found to get the guys in my team to be engaged and performing at a higher level is to teach them how to motivate themselves.

At The Physio Co, there are two very significant things that have improved the motivation and performance of our team.  These two things are quite simple:

1. We have defined WHAT we are all trying to achieve
2. We have defined HOW we will all do it.

As simple as these two things sound, they have worked wonders for The Physio Co’s growth over the past two years.

The What 
My vision of The Physio Co’s future has been clear for years.  That picture however, was in my mind – and no one could see it!

In 2009 I created our very first Painted Picture.  A Painted Picture is a short, simple but detailed description of what the business will look like in 3 years time.

Getting the vision out of my mind, onto paper and sharing it with all current and future team members helped motivate our team more than I ever imagined.

The How
With the vision clear and our team now motivated to bring the Painted Picture to life, creating some very clear expectations in terms of HOW we go about it was needed.  Enter The Physio Co values.

Now I’m not talking about lofty words that are hard to understand.  I’m talking about some very simple values that even our kids could live.  For example, ‘We are always on time’ is part of The Physio Co’s values.  As is, ‘We are friendly and make positive first impressions.’

Creating and then obsessing over our Painted Picture of 2012 and core values have been the most significant things I’ve ever done at The Physio Co.  Creating them wasn’t easy but it was absolutely worth it.  Start today by grabbing a blank sheet of paper and getting the vision out of your mind and onto paper.  It will excite, energise and motivate you, I promise!

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This post received quite a few questions and comments.  You can find them over here at blog.business.vic.gov.au.