Rebranding Corporate Culture: Importance of Creating a Positive and Efficient Workplace to Achieve Business Growth with Amanda HarNess

Positive work culture is an avenue for greatness. It attracts talent, drives engagement, and impacts happiness. Culture is as influential as your business strategy because it either builds up or undermines your objectives. A multitude of factors plays in developing workplace culture, including leadership, management, philosophies, people, work environment, communication, values, and so much more.

Most of us let our workplace culture form naturally, but what we don’t know is that there should be a system to follow. Not defining your workplace culture is a mistake, and we must end that. Today Amanda HarNess would shift some perspectives and swerve us in the right direction. Don’t miss this out because, in this session, she will talk about rebranding the company culture to create a unique business that harnesses the correct morals and mindsets. Now, let’s take a deep dive and discover more.

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Rebranding Corporate Culture: Importance of Creating a Positive and Efficient Workplace to Achieve Business Growth with Amanda HarNess

Welcome to Actions-Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Right now, we’re in a time where a lot of things are changing, a lot of our attitudes about work and everything are shifting. There comes times in all of our lives that we need to shift our own attitudes. A lot of people refer to this as a rebranding. We’re shifting our focus, shifting our businesses. Today, my guest, Amanda HarNess, is an entrepreneur who recently rebranded her business. Her business was called Kinetic Spark and now is Business Excelerated.

Amanda, welcome to the program.

Thank you so much for having me. I’m happy to be here.

Thank you so much for joining in. First of all, tell us a little bit about the nature of your business, because you address a lot of these issues with work culture that we’ve been observing for quite some time now.

I’m a business growth accelerator, and I’m a fractional COO. When you’re in an operation seat, you’re looking at a number of different things inside of a business. Not only are you looking at their day-to-day, how are their systems and processes, and how are they operating on a daily basis, but also, who is operating in the business.

Without the people, we don't have the business. Click To Tweet

I do put a strong emphasis on how are we optimizing our people from a performance standpoint, engagement, how are we looking at things from a top-down approach when it comes to the trickle down effect of leadership, and taking a look at how we’re communicating the long-term vision of the business, getting people engaged and invested in that, and carrying that over into the type of culture you’re also building at the organization.

How long have you been at this business?

I have 11 years of experience in operations, but I’ve owned my own business for just under two years now.

You’ve encountered a lot of businesses that are trying to expand and trying to set up the right culture. My question is, are most of your clients, most of the people you’ve historically worked with, focused on the expansion or focused on the culture? Does it tend to be a little bit of both?

I think it tends to be a little bit of both. There is a little bit of a misconstrued perception of what it means to have a company culture. There is some reeducation that happens while we’re working together or even just some adjustments and modifications. If we’re making a number of changes in the business, oftentimes, that changes the culture. An example of culture that I like to use is not just we have ping pong tables and pajama Fridays. That might be part of culture, but that isn’t culture in and of itself.

ACAN 44 | Rebranding Corporate Culture
Rebranding Corporate Culture: Culture is the norms of the business, how you agree to interact together with your clients.

An example would be if a business is a hub-and-spoke type of model where you’ve got leadership in the middle, and everything has to go through them. All the spokes are all the people. The culture of that business is really reliant on the owner being the primary decision-maker, and there isn’t a lot delegated to anyone else on the team to make their own decisions. That fosters a culture of people not feeling like they can have initiation for themselves or make their own decisions. They have to go to leadership for that. Another example might be whether or not leadership values the opinions of their employees. You can solicit feedback from your employees. Ultimately, as the leader, you’re still the decision-maker as to whether or not you do anything with those opinions, but you can still take them into account, or are you just a C-suite where conversations only happen at the top. You guys make the decisions, and you just tell everyone else what they’re doing. We can go on about opinions, whether which one’s right, and which one’s better, and whatever, but really it’s just a matter of what culture works best for the people that are in it and for the type of growth or vision you have for your business.

When a business is looking to expand its operations — and I’m sure you work with a lot of people going from that startup stage to where they’re starting to grow, grow more employees, grow a bigger client-base — how often does a business need to completely shift their culture at that point in time?

I don’t know that I’ve ever had a business completely shift their culture. The longer the business — if it’s a legacy business, has been around for a long time — then things are the way they are just because they’re that way. You hear answers like, “Well, we’ve always done it that way.” There might be some bigger cultural swings that happen in an older business just because they’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with one way of doing things. I don’t know that there would ever be a complete cultural shift, because the owners and leadership started a business for a certain reason. They’re going back to their why.

ACAN 44 | Rebranding Corporate Culture
Rebranding Corporate Culture: Culture has a lot to do with your why.

They’ve obviously attracted a certain type of person to come in and be part of the team. That person has some kind of alignment in culture. Even if these businesses haven’t sat down and fully defined in black and white what their culture is, they have grown their business and attracted members of a team, maybe indirectly. They’ve been attracted because of the culture, or they’ve built a certain way of being because of a culture. It’s not necessarily a full shift but maybe a more clear and specific definition.

How often do you observe aspects of a culture, whether it be the culture itself or the way that culture is applied, being a main factor in limiting a business’ ability to thrive, expand, and grow like a lot of them are trying to do when they work with you?

Sometimes, it can get in the way. Sometimes, it’s not even really the culture; it’s more just habits. That can be tied to culture, but people just get in the habit. They get in the habit of always making the decisions, or of always asking for feedback, or always turning to an external adviser before they make a decision or make a big move. It’s really just what I think people get comfortable with. When I’m coming in, and I’m suggesting or recommending a shift in something, a modification, some kind of transformation, they can feel like a big change. Change doesn’t always have to be uncomfortable though. I do try to make sure that it’s not always unclear, scary, or uncomfortable, unsettling.

ACAN 44 | Rebranding Corporate Culture
Rebranding Corporate Culture: When someone is in the habit of doing things a certain way, it does take a little bit longer to maybe warm up to the idea of doing things a different way. Sometimes, that’s a little bit less culture but more just comfort with change.

That brings up an interesting question about habits in general, because I think this applies to both business as well as our lives in general. We all get into habits. We all have habits that put us into ruts sometimes. What do you think is the right frequency or cadence in which any of us, anyone listening out there, should go about reevaluating their habits, even if it’s not prompted by something else? They say, “Okay. I do this every day. I do this every week. Why? Let me see if it’s still working for me.”

I guess it just depends, because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If things are working for you, then why change it? When you go to reassess your habits and routines, just how you’ve done things, I would take a look more at your goals, whether those are personal or professional, but are the things I’m doing daily working in the direction or moving the needle toward that? If they’re not, then it’s time to maybe reassess your habits. If it is, then keep doing what you’re doing. You said something there that, sometimes, very easily seen change can prompt someone to want to take a pause and look.

Forcing yourself to maybe make sure that your everyday is moving the needle toward those goals is a little more intentional than just waiting for something to prompt you. Click To Tweet

That’s mostly what I would look at. Are these serving me? Are they getting you where you want to go?

One interesting thing I think about habits as well is that we’ve all been in a situation where we’ve encountered the person whose habits are so entrenched, they’re afraid of change, they’ve done the same thing, they’re so afraid of something different. What do you think is the best way to prevent that from happening to make sure that you don’t get in a situation where, “Okay, yes. Maybe these habits are serving me. They’re serving me now. I want to continue them,” they become so entrenched that it’s scary, the idea of ever changing it?

I don’t think everything needs to change. I think some habits are good for us to always stay the same. That’s what creates a level of comfort. It gives us an idea of what’s happening next. The big scary unknown that you hear about in literature a lot — no one likes that. Everyone’s afraid of the dark in some way. Those routines do give us a sense of comfort especially during change. If someone’s so entrenched that they are going about their day with blinders on, that may not be the most healthy, but again, if you just pause and take a look at if what you’re doing is sending you in the direction that you want and you’re on a trajectory that you think is good for you, business or personal, then I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to choose certain aspects of your life that always do remain the same. For example, I like to start my day with some coffee and 15 minutes of reading for work. I like to end my day in bed with my little book lightreading some really terrible but awesome fantasy novel — the more vampires, the better or something crazy. It’s just the way that I turn on and turn off my brain. I might learn a lot from the books I read in the morning. I’m not really learning anything from those fantasy novels, but it feels really good to me. It’s how I open my brain and how I close my brain. There’s nothing unhealthy about that.

Those comforts are what makes it okay for me to feel like I have the capacity to manage or negotiate all the changes and the movements that are constantly happening. Click To Tweet

When you’re an entrepreneur or owning a business, it’s always and every day that I’ll be like that.

Yeah. That’s interesting because I feel like some people will fall into the trap sometimes of thinking that they need to be productive at all times. One of the things that I’ve noticed is that we can’t be on all the time. We can’t be doing something mind-expanding or productive at every moment, every waking moment of every day. We’re all going to have our guilty pleasure. We can’t have all of them. We can’t follow sports, politics, entertainment, music, and everything, and fill that with too much of our day. We all have to have that something that just helps us relax, enjoy ourselves, and not worry about advancing our lives and business at some point in the day.

Yeah.

I like to say productivity is a four-letter word. Really, what you want to look at is effective. How effective is what you're doing? Click To Tweet

Sometimes, sitting there and watching sports or reading your fantasy vampire novel is really effective for your mental health. It’s giving your brain a break. It’s not that you’re not doing something. They don’t have to feel like guilty pleasures. I think the word guilt comes into play when we use productivity. “I’m not being productive.” We don’t have to produce something to be effective. You don’t need to make a spreadsheet for the sake of making a spreadsheet. It’s not going to do anything for you. Please don’t. It’s more about, is what I’m doing right now effective in one way or another for my physical health, mental health, business growth, business stability? What am I doing with my time? It can seem like you’re doing nothing, but it’s probably for something.

I’d like to reiterate that for anyone listening out there who’s either just starting up on a journey of entrepreneurship, or something similar, or aspiring to that, oftentimes, that intimidation that you can’t have what we refer to as “guilty pleasures”, which I’m glad you pointed out that, that word throws a lot of people off, it’s not a matter of having nothing relaxing, or nothing to yourself, and not going skiing on a weekday, or ever doing anything like that. There’s a whole bunch of other considerations. You can still have an effective family and effective social life, good mental health, and all those other things that are part of the inherent human experience.

Absolutely. I think one of my primary goals when I’m working with a business is to make it so that the owner can start their day not with a bunch of fires that already have to be put out, but that they can start with a little bit less stress. They don’t go to bed with acid reflux. Maybe they save themselves a few extra wrinkles in their forehead. One of my favorite ideas is, if we can increase the speed of execution toward your goals, and we can get you from being 12 hours behind to two hours ahead, which we can, then you can slow your morning. You can order the here cup at your favorite coffee shop instead of the to-go cup.

It’s those emotions that people are really after when I’m working with them. It’s not, “I want to optimize my processes.” It’s, “No. I want to make sure that what I’m creating is standard and consistent so that I can delegate with confidence, so that I am not the only person doing everything in this business, and then I can trust my team to execute.” The team feels like they know what the heck they’re doing. It’s not just about the owner feeling confident handing things off. The people doing the work also need to feel like they know what they’re doing too so that they can make the right decisions so that they can show the owner that they also are confident and that they see why they’re doing it. It’s really just fostering a consistent way that you can deliver on your promises, creating a fulfilling work environment where the owner and the team feel like they know what part they play in the outcomes of what’s happening.

You can see rises in revenue because you’ve stopped wasting time. You’ve stopped creating as many errors as maybe you used to. You’re not leaving money on the table because you know exactly how and what you should be doing 99% of the time. You’re more prepared when something happens. If you know what you should be doing, it’s easier to see when something’s offtrack, and you can catch it sooner.

You put systems in place to make everything more effective. Also, you talk a lot about the team and having teams work effectively together. It seems like you want to see a workforce that is more fulfilled or more engaged. We’ve all seen the surveys from Gallup that show the majority of our workforce in the US are disengaged. What is the core component of your business that you look to make these teams work well together?

I have some education and professional training both in effective communication as well as motivational psychology. I’m able to understand what might drive an individual or a group of people, the owner, and be able to help them set themselves up in a way that just communicates with their internal compass. For adults in jobs, we’ve been doing them for decades. We believe in ourselves for 20, 30, something years. A lot of things are ingrained, or what we value is pretty ingrained.

An example, if we’re talking about the competitive nature of maintaining and retaining employees, people are starting to say, “Well, how am I competitive in the market?” Some people will feel like if you just pay people more, they’ll stay. For some people, that’s true. They hold money at a high value. They want a bigger paycheck. Some people want more vacation days instead. Some people want more bonuses, and they don’t want those bonuses to be connected to work. They don’t want free schwag with the business’ name on it. They want overnight stay at a local hotel, and they can do a little staycation evening with their significant other. I think it’s taking the time to recognize the individuals of a business and where you can meet them. That makes sense, right? You don’t need to be an all-encompassing business that does everything for everyone, and you’re just trying to stay ahead.

ACAN 43 | Rebranding Corporate Culture
Rebranding Corporate Culture: You don’t need to stay ahead. You just need to match where your people are and understand what they value. That is what’s fulfilling — if someone feels like they’re seen, heard, that they’re valued within their workspace.

How someone is compensated is only one facet of that. It’s just an example that shows that if you compensate one person in one way, and someone in another, that’s okay. You can make that choice, but you have to understand what might drive someone so that they can see where they’re important.

It seems like what you’re postulating is saying that if a business can improve the employee experience by taking into account what drives the employee and getting the employee to be happy, fulfilled, content, whatever your favorite word is – we all have different words – that that’s going to naturally, organically bring out the best in the employees, and they really care. That’s going to improve your business, the bottom line, all those other metrics that people traditionally have thought about when they think about a business.

Right. When I come into business, and we’re trying to make their processes more efficient, we are trying to see where we are wasting time, where people are on their emails too often. We are trying to figure out how much more time we can get back. We also want to get people to want to give more. That’s where that piece comes in instead of trying to force them into this definition of the job description, and just trying to get them to fulfill that definition over, and over, and over, and more, and more, and more. If we can make certain accommodations that works with that person, say it’s more important for one person to have an hour lunch break, where they can go play on that ping pong table in their PJs that I talked about, or someone wants to work through their lunch so they can get off an hour early and make it to their kid’s soccer game, both of those work as long as your business can work within and around those hours.

If you’re flexible for both of those situations, it’s going to make someone feel like they’re getting what they need. They’re going to feel more inclined to give their time a little better. That person is more inclined to get all their work done during that lunch hour, so they can leave early, like you’ve given them the allowance too. The other person is going to be more inclined to work harder during those other hours if they’re off for one in the middle. Otherwise, they’re going to have to stay late.

If you can show people that you're listening and you're making accommodations as reasonable for what they need, then they want to be there. Click To Tweet

They want to give more of their time, of their efforts, of their energy.

What I’m wondering is how often do you enter a business that you would describe as having an “employee morale” problem?

Your air-quoting “employee morale” problem. Usually, that comes from miscommunication. There’s either ineffective lines of communication that are causing miscommunications, misunderstandings, not feeling fully clear on everything.

There's just a lot of those implied or assumptive emotions that come into play when communication isn't at its best. That's one of the key things I look at, how we are communicating. Click To Tweet

That can be as simple as, “When do you use email versus a phone call?” If we’re constantly getting irritated with one another, because we have to meet deadlines and certain aspects of a project are dependent on different people, and one or two people are always wandering behind, then maybe we need to use some kind of project management tool that helps everyone be more accountable for their part, and they understand that my deadline affects your deadline. They may never have meant to impose on someone else. It just was that you had poor communication regarding deadlines and accountability. I think that when there’s discourse among a team, it can be bad blood if people have been around for too long, and things are just the way they are because they are, or there’s just some underlying issue that’s just created some friction for a long time.

Anyone looking to improve the morale in your business or start up a business should be thinking about these communication methods amongst the people on your team and how to sound like you are more open with your communication, not make as many assumptions like I assumed you wanted this, you assumed I wanted that. Is that accurate way to think about it or is there more depth to it?

I think open communication is necessary, but also very clear communication. Say an owner wants to finally delegate something off their plate, they’ve been doing this thing, and they just do it. Every time they try to delegate it, it’s never done right, and they’re the best one at it; they might as well just keep doing it. Usually, that’s not true, and someone else can do it just as good. It’s just that you may have missed a few spots where the communication of what the expectations are has been a little bit light.

What information do they need? What decisions can they and can they not make? When should they ask you a question? Really, just defining really specifically. Are you delegating just the task? Are you delegating the task and the decisions that come along with it? Are you also delegating the outcomes that happen and the responses to those outcomes?

It does make sense to understand what is delegated and what’s not delegated. I think one of the situations you see quite a bit is when someone has given a task at their job and the person assigning the task has one idea of what’s delegated and the person doing the task has another idea or even another preference. In the past, I really, really hated whenever I felt micromanaged. Whenever I’ve handed anyone a task, I’ve been a little bit cautious about giving too much specific description, but have worked with people who have wanted more specific description in the past, and to not reflect your own preferences or your own understanding and make those assumptions and say, “Okay, wait. What are you delegating?” CEOs might say, “You’re responsible for everything about operations, and even the outcomes, even the decisions about where we’re going, as long as you just hit this number, or something like that.” Some CEOs may be a little bit more hands-on with a few things in some organizations.

Yeah. That’s just where that clear communication comes in. When you’re being open and communicative, that doesn’t mean you have to add another meeting. That means that you can even enhance your meetings. There doesn’t have to be a place where time is wasted. Meetings should be for problem-solving and decision-making, and that sort of thing. That doesn’t mean to be more clear and specific when you do communicate, whether that’s from the team up or from the leader down. It could be in the form of delegation or the people doing the tasks or that sort of thing knowing when they should ask a question, when they should email, when they should go knock on the owner’s office door. A lot of that does fall back into culture, and it’s just defining what’s expected, what’s appropriate, what is the vibe and the feeling of our particular workplace.

That makes sense because I know a lot of people doing the work will oftentimes be like, “Okay. I have some questions, but when am I being a bother? When am I being the person that asks too many questions when the manager responsible for me is responsible for 13 other things and has so much going on and just wants you to just figure it out? It sounds like in a lot of cases, there’s this guessing game. What you’re trying to do in this case is eliminate much of this guessing game and have it more be clear, “Okay. This is how we communicate back and forth on this and that. This is what our work culture expects.

Right. An example is, I was working with an owner who was pretty darn busy most of the time. There were about 12 employees, but it was a pretty small office. You could see most everyone from your desk. He couldn’t really take the time every time someone needed to come knocking on his door. He also wasn’t big on email, or using Slack to communicate electronically, or things like that. His preference was for you to knock on his door and ask a question. He also can’t just stop every time someone has a question. What we ended up doing was putting office hours. Three times a day, he had 30-45 minutes slots where he’d open his office door. When his door was open during that time, whatever questions came up during the last couple of hours, that’s when you come and ask your questions. You go get your answers, and you keep going on. Obviously, if something has to be answered at the moment, that was always acceptable. It made it so that door-open-door-closed was a communication, a non-verbal communication regarding when I’m having office hours, when you can just come ask me a question, and when you need to be more intentional and emergence if you need to ask me a question if the door’s closed. It was just a way of keeping open communication while also protecting the owner and making the employees know what was expected of them.

Finding a solution that really accounts for what people on all sides need out of that situation. I feel like everyone has something in their life where they need to be able to just sit and focus and not be interrupted, because interruption can cause a lot of lost output, a lot of lost time.

Yeah. There are multiple studies that show it takes something like 23 minutes for your brain to get back into focus on the task, which is why they say multitasking is not a real thing. If you’re interrupted every 15 minutes, you’re never really in the zone with whatever you were doing, so errors happen. It takes you a lot longer to do whatever you were doing.

Let me get into a little bit about the specifics about your business now. What kind of organizations do you typically work with? Is there a certain size range? Is there a psychographic type of business or type of people that tend to be gravitated toward your business? 

Yeah. I work specifically with service-based businesses, less on the product manufacturing side of the world. Typically, these businesseses have a team usually of 10 or more. It’s not exclusive, but they do have a team, because of all these people stuff that I’m talking about and really optimizing a group of people together. Most of the businesses I work with have gotten over that $1-million milestone hump. Again, not exclusive. There are some businesses that might be smaller than that, that I would work with. In that case, they still have a budget allocated for business development, and operation strategy, and the things that we would be doing together. Really, the seat I’m in is an adjunct to business development. We’re taking a look at the foundation of a business, and creating an overall business strategy, and then looking at their people and their processes, and making sure that foundation is set up so that they can get to those goals faster with a little more ease, and success, and safety than maybe they would have without working with me. Service-based business is really broad as well.

That’s because I just want businesses that are focused on the customer experience. If you’re providing a service, all of your processes, systems, everything you’re doing is focused on delivering your promise to somebody, making sure that that’s what they’re doing, and then fostering that team development. They’re focused on growth. I don’t necessarily work with businesses that are wanting to just be where they are like, “We want to just stay where we are, but let’s put a little bit of foundation to stay there.” I want to help businesses grow. You asked about psychographic. That would be maybe a goal there, is that they’re wanting to grow.

I just love that term psychographic. I feel like that’s a little bit more of an essence of who someone is on a personal level rather than your superficial demographic. Psychographic is really what drives a person and also what drives an organization. As a fractional COO, how many organizations are you typically working with? How is your engagement? Usually, they have five hours a week, 40 hours a week. Could it be anywhere in between?<

Yeah. The minimum I typically work with a business is six months. The reason why is because we were talking about changes happening, transformation. To make that less unsettling and less uncomfortable, there has to be behavior changes on the people side as well. That takes a bit of time. You can’t just make a change, say, “This is how we’re doing it now,” and then expect that to just be the way. I find that to benefit my clients the most, and not just creating a bandaid for their problems, but creating a long-term sustainable solution, that we work together for at least six months. It can be longer than that if we think that that’s necessary for the type of work and the scope that we’re doing. Typically, it’s a six-month engagement. After doing a discovery call together is how we’ll figure out if it needs more than six months, what’s the scope of the work that we were doing together. I don’t really work five hours this week, six hours this week. We’ve determined a certain amount of time and the monetary investment that we’re going to need here. I will work however much time with you during those six months or more to get that done. You know exactly what your outcomes should be, and we’re going to get there.

ACAN 44 | Rebranding Corporate Culture
Rebranding Corporate Culture: I don’t really work hourly, because I want to be able to promise someone an outcome versus a certain amount of my time.

That’s a thing that I slipped up here myself a little bit. I’ve said to people in the past that I think the hourly model is a little bit outdated in the sense that what really matters is the outcome, which is what you’re trying to get at. The other question I was going to ask about these behavioral changes is that, is part of the reason for the length of the engagement is that you can’t just suddenly change everything all at once? You have to ingrain one habit and then ingrain another habit, and that usually takes 21 days or more, I think.

That is part of it, just making sure we’re not doing too much at once. The other part is that, sometimes, there is a little bit of – we create a system, we implement it, and then we have to assess it and maybe refine it. If we worked for a shorter amount of time, we would get one version of a process or a system. We wouldn’t have necessarily had the time to test and refine. I want to make sure that when we’re done with our engagement, you’re great to go. There are some things that we can measure twice, cut once. We know what it is, then here we go. There are some things that just take, “Let’s try it this way,” and that worked great, or, “Hmm, let’s make a couple of tweaks. Let’s make a few more tweaks.” You have to see things over an extended period with certain aspects in order to know that what you’re choosing and deciding on is in fact the right thing longer-term, not just today.

I also want to touch base on what prompted you to start your own business and then what you experienced as you were starting up.

I wanted to be able to help more than one business. Working for a larger system means that you’re really enhancing that business over time. You get to see a lot of these changes. I wanted the opportunity to be able to go into a business, help them make a number of changes, really work myself out of a job essentially until they hit a new milestone where they may come back, maybe we do another project together. The idea of being able to help many businesses is one of the reasons that I branched out. Really, as an entrepreneur, I like entrepreneurial flexibility. It comes along with its own challenges that don’t come when you’re an employed person. For some people, that’s the best thing for them. For me, I wanted some of the flexibilities that entrepreneurship gave, and was open, and willing, and capable of accepting the challenges that also come along with that. If I really think about it, I don’t think I was ever the best at being an employee.

I think I was always someone challenging the status quo, asking lots of questions, bringing up new ideas, Hey, let's try this thing. Click To Tweet

While that was usually received well – no one was ever unkind about it – nothing ever happened either. I wanted things to happen. I wanted to shake and move.

I know that experience quite well. What I’m wondering is, for anyone listening out there that’s experiencing the same thing, say there’s someone out there, they have a job, but they have ideas and they want to see them implemented as opposed to either the lip service or dismissal that they’ll get at a normal corporate environment, do you think anyone feeling that should explore entrepreneurship? Do you think they should possibly explore other avenues or think about it in a whole different way?<

I don’t think I’m the right professional to answer if someone should just pick up their life and start a business. That’s how I did it. I just made a decision, and that’s what was happening. That’s my personality too. Once I decide on something, that’s it. That helps me in being an entrepreneur, because I decided that that’s what I was going to do and so I was willing to do whatever it meant to do that. For some people, it might be a matter of they’re in the right type of work but at the wrong place of work. Maybe that comes down to a culture. Maybe they need to just find a place to work that fosters a culture that aligns with them, and their desires, and a leadership team that maybe actions upon the opinions and thoughts they have. Maybe they should look for a job in leadership. There’s someone that’s got great ideas, and they’ve got ideas about not just what but also how, and who, and when. Maybe they should look for a position toward the top. Maybe they’re right for that. There’s a number of answers. Maybe they should be an entrepreneur. I don’t know, but I think it’s definitely worth exploring. I wouldn’t just sit in that status quo if it doesn’t feel right for you.

When you decided that you wanted to be an entrepreneur, you wanted to be a fractional COO, and go in and out of businesses, what did you experience on the way? What sacrifices did you have to make, to make your business happen as opposed to your employment happen?

I look, rather than the sacrifices I make, more at what new boundaries I need to put up, because I can sacrifice a lot of my time, a lot of my energy. When you’re an entrepreneur, your business is you. There’s less of a clear line between when you’re at work and when you’re not unless you define those boundaries. I choose to work in an office that’s a coworking building rather than a home office, because that’s a contextual boundary for me. I’m at work when I’m working. When I’m at home, that is when I’m with my fiance and my dog. Of course, there are times when I do need to do a little thing, and I’ll just let him know, “Hey, I just got to go answer this [request] or whatever.” It’s also setting boundaries to create expectations of my client. If I’m emailing them at 10:00 PM, they’re going to expect we work for them at 10:00 PM. right. If I’m emailing them at 10:00 PM, they might think I expect them to respond to me at 10:00 PM. One of my biggest focuses is how can I get you to get some of your time back and focus on some of these personal life things you want and get your haircut. I don’t want them to feel like they should be emailing at 10:00 PM, if I’m modeling emailing at 10:00 PM.

It’s partly walking the talk. Part of it is setting boundaries out of respect for myself as well as out of respect for the people whose lives are affected by mine. When it comes to sacrifice, unless you have external funding, maybe funding is a sacrifice. When you’re starting up, you’ve got to be a mover and a shaker in order to get yourself to a place that makes it, so it can be your full-time everything. I had a little bit of a transition period when I was leaving my corporate job too. I went part-time and did this part time, but pretty quickly. It was in three months. I made sure I did what I needed to. This is my full-time job, and it has been since then. It’s also just making sure that you’re setting yourself up safely. That’s a bit of a sacrifice that you just need to make sure that you’re not making decisions off the cuff, because they feel good right now, but that you also know what’s your risk tolerance for making big decisions or suddenly moving to an entrepreneurial journey being a full-time job, things like that. I don’t really feel like I’ve sacrificed anything. I think I’ve just had to relearn my expectations, definitions, boundaries, reassess my risk tolerance.

That makes sense. The other thing I want to cover before wrapping up is your recent rebrand. What prompted the rebranding? This is another part of that whole process of what we talked about at the beginning of this episode, about reevaluating some things and deciding, “Okay. Is this serving me? Is this not serving me? Does this need to be adjusted?”

That is absolutely what it was, yes. When I started my business, I was very specific. I was only going to focus on healthcare organizations. In my former life, I was in healthcare, and I still have a specialty for that. I, by no means, defined myself only in a healthcare space, because I work with plenty of other types of businesses. There are so many other types of skills that are transferable. The education knowledge that I have has helped countless types of service-based businesses. That’s an example. I also better defined what it is I do and don’t do from a service perspective. I better defined who my perfect prospect was, what types of people I want to work with, and not just what types of people I want to work with, but what types of people my services would help. I got more specific, more intentional. That really meant that the look and feel of my business needed the same little lift as well.

ACAN 44 | Rebranding Corporate Culture
Rebranding Corporate Culture: The soul of the business is the same. I’m just wearing different clothes. It knows what it is a little bit better. It knows itself a little bit more. The rebrand feels really good.

It matches all of the shifts and transformations that I’ve made on the internal space, and it just reflects it outward.

If anyone listening wants to get a hold of you, possibly to talk about your business, what would be the best way that someone would contact you?

You can find me on LinkedIn just to learn a little bit more about my business and me there. You can find me just under my name, Amanda HarNess, H-A-R capital N-E-S-S. You can also go to my website which is businessexcelerated.com. Those are probably the best ways. My email is the same: amanda@businessexcelerated.com. You can reach out to me directly or take a look at some more information. Yeah, those are really the best spaces to find out what it is I do and who I am.

One last question I have for you before we wrap up is, what do you see as the trends happening right now in work culture? You work with a lot of companies. We hear a lot about some changes going on now because of the ongoing pandemic, the work from home experiment, people wanting different things. Maybe not everyone wants the ping pong table and pajama Fridays as you put it. What do you see as being possibly different, say, 5, 10 years into the future?

I don’t think remote work is going anywhere. I don’t think it’s right for every business. There are lots of businesses that it is right for. I also think that flexible work hours is also an expectation now. I gave an example about flexible work hours where one person might value an hour lunch break and one person might value getting off an hour early for a reason. I think that as long as the requests that your employee is making, from a flexibility perspective, regarding location, what hours are on and off, what types of benefits and incentives that they prefer, as long as they’re not unhealthy for what you’re trying to do as a business, I would say consider it. I think that’s the biggest thing. Try not to create really defined definitions where you don’t have to. Create them where you need to. I’ve said so many things here today about being standard, consistent, and clear. Where you don’t have to be black and white, try to consider an alternative option if one is presented to you. If it’s not right, you can explain why it’s not, but try and consider it.

Yeah. That makes sense. Is that the same thing? You’ve talked before about job titles and job roles and how we might have a little bit more individual representations of what we actually do at organizations.

I try not to define someone by a job description but more about what outcome they are contributing to in the business. Let’s say I am an office administrator, but I also have really creative ideas when it comes to social media marketing. Now, there’s someone else in the marketing seat, but when we’re in a meeting, an all-hands-on-deck meeting, I should be allowed to maybe speak up if I have a good idea. That marketing person will take it, elaborate, and run with it. Just because I’m an office assistant doesn’t mean I don’t have good ideas for something else. As long as I’m in my role as an office assistant, and I am doing what is expected of me from an outcomes perspective in that role, how else can I contribute to the growth of the business without being defined in a box? Yeah, that’s another version of an outcome-oriented way and a consider-it way type of thinking.

Considerate versus consider it. With these changes, do you envision a happier workforce?

I hope so. I’ve heard this so many times that the pandemic really gave people a moment to pause and decide what it is they actually valued, or wanted, and what they were willing to tolerate, or create boundaries around, or sacrifice. They’ve redefined all of that for themselves. I don’t think that we’re coming back to a workforce that’s making more and greater demands. I think they’re just more intentional and specific about their demands, because now, they know what they are. We have to be open to listening to them, because it’s just a new understanding that people are having for themselves.

I’m hopeful that some of these developments will be positive, at least in the long run. There’s always some frustration with change.

Yeah. It can be really uncomfortable for most people. When I’m working with someone, I try to make it as comfortable as possible, but they don’t know what to expect all the time. I can feel like that as the owner. I can feel like that as a team. I think that a happier workforce is hopefully the trajectory that we’re going down, because it has been the status quo for a long time that the harder you work, the better you’re seen, but work smarter, not harder. Why can’t we get done in five hours what we normally do in eight if we’re just more efficient with it? If I get it done in five, then why do I need to sit here for three hours just to show face for eight? It gives you an opportunity to reallocate that time to something else. If someone’s got three extra hours, let’s move the dial toward our goals even more then or let’s reward you with a little bit of time off, whatever works for your business. Think about it. Consider it.

Those hours, there are other parts of life most of us have. At least one person in your life, a family or a friend, that could use emotional support, or could use a little bit more community connection. We could use something for our physical and mental health. The list goes on and on. Hopefully, we can reclaim something or at least have a better overall setup. I’m glad for people like you and people who are trying to help move things forward with respect to how we interact with our offices, with our jobs, and with organizations. 

I’d like to thank you so much for joining us today on Actions-Antidotes and encourage all the listeners out there to think about a few things. First of all, think about how you’re communicating your expectations. A lot of this discussion had to do with work but could apply to other areas of life too. It could apply to your family. It could apply to your social circles where you’re saying, “Okay. I’m going to be a little bit more clear with what my expectation is. If I started a kickball team, I expect everyone to be here on time because it matters to be on the field.” For example, that’s another expectation that needs to be made clear as well. Think about that communication, think about that expectation, and think about what’s going to make your interactions with people a bit more joyous, and just harmonious, or whatever you want to call it.

Yeah. What’s going to move the dial in the direction of how you want to be in the business or who you want to be as a person.

Excellent. Thank you everyone for listening. I encourage you to tune back into Actions-Antidotes for more episodes with people who went out there, started what they wanted to start in life, and has made some progress toward making their own experiences more fulfilling and joyous. Thank you.

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About Amanda HarNess

Amanda is a Business Growth Accelerator and Fractional COO. She focuses on uncovering and resolving operational inefficiencies and people performance breakdowns, in order to help increase the speed of execution toward business goals. With a focus on strategy, people, and process her collaborations result in increased customer satisfaction, a fulfilling work environment, and rises in revenue. She helps organizations confidently progress toward their visions with best success and greatest ease, so they can experience business growth with excellence. She lives in Denver, CO and works with clients across the country. When at home she enjoys spending time with her fiance, TC and dog Atlas. Her favorite activities are dancing and eating shrimp Pad Thai.