How to reboot your company for innovation and growth

Passion Reboots deal with preventing ordinary performance by rebuilding your foundational culture with a strong sense of purpose and energizing environments in sync with customers, revenue and key metrics that drive accountability. Passion questions are:

  • What do we believe in? Reintroduce purposeful, fun environments.
  • Why are we here? Focus everyone on revenue, customers, profits, etc.
  • When will we know we’re successful? Tie everyone together with real-time metrics and accountability.

If you get people reinvigorated and reset the platform with more innovative, competitive products, passion makes you follow through, reconnecting everyone with what matters most for growth, starting with customers and clients. The hard part is not making changes but making the hard choices that can have the biggest impact on your business. It helps to have someone on the outside to give you a fresh perspective and guide you. Beyond consultants, you need people to help you execute and set up internal Rebooters who can help you transform and run the business.

What are the risks and benefits of rebooting?

The risk is trying to do too much. Each of the nine questions has three Reboot Rules to address the future. Clearly, you can’t focus on all 27 rules if you want to be effective. Reboots can be dialed up or down. Some companies only focus on People Reboots, while others attack all three zones. Another risk is that not everyone may be on board. You’ll need to figure out how to get people to go along with you, or upgrade your talent quickly.

Benefits include increasing share, crushing competitors, improving profitability, boosting revenue and improving morale. Organizations can become better places to work, creating a more attractive brand with happier customers and employees who are more in sync with revenue, clients, partners, growth and innovation.

What should you do after the reboot is complete?

Reboots aren’t a quick fix and should become a systemic part of your business so you don’t fall back into old habits. Make it part of your operating culture so it becomes the way you think and run the business. Every quarter, celebrate, analyze, communicate and ask, ‘What do we need to do next?’ Keep the energy flowing, live by the Reboot Rules and even create a few new ones of your own.

Dean DeBiase is chairman of Reboot Partners and an alumnus of the Northern Illinois University College of Business. Reach him at [email protected] or www.RebootPartners.com.