What are Strength Based Businesses?

An extensive global survey of 1.7 million people in businesses by The Gallup Organisation revealed only 20% actually felt they used their strengths at work. As they moved upwards within the organisation a higher percentage felt they played increasingly less to their strengths. Further Gallup research showed that where teams said they had the chance to play to their strengths they outperformed those teams that said they didn't.

The net result is that businesses significantly under exploit their potential, both in human and financial terms: whilst those that use their strengths, and make more use of what produces exceptional results, are shown to be more successful. A business that does not understand and keeps applying its identified strengths will find itself paying more attention to band-aid solutions; that is trying to correct what isn't working, as opposed to capitalising on the source of past success.

Key features of strength based businesses

•A)   They understand what consistently works and produces results, challenging tradition and dogma in continually striving for exceptional results. They benefit from high levels of employee satisfaction, motivation and engagement because people are doing what they enjoy and are good at.

•B)   They use people's talents, skills and strengths for what they are, not as a feature of their job description; thus matching team and personal strengths to project and task demands. They continuously allow people's natural talents to discover and identify new strengths.

•C)   They give people high degrees of autonomy to move the business towards fulfilling its purpose and longer term goals; and encourage them to demonstrate personal leadership and initiative. The task of leadership also falls at different times to different people when circumstances require particular strengths, so teams become self-managing.

•D)   They concentrate training on building abilities that make the best use of natural talents and skills, rather than solely correcting weaknesses. The performance appraisal system thus changes to being an on-going consideration of sources of personal success and future possibilities.

Already some businesses work with a strengths based approach, and these include Standard Chartered bank, Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust and Castrol Marine (a division of BP).

The challenge:

The challenge for businesses is to accept that understanding and exploiting what works can produce better results than concentrating solely on what hasn't worked and needs changing. That means taking stock of all those strategies, processes, systems, culture, habits and skills that have produced exceptional results; really understanding the link between them and business success; and then making more use of them. It also means acknowledging that people's real strengths are what they themselves feel makes them strong and not what others think, as is more traditional.

To be able to do more of what works means cutting back on anything that is an evident drain on time, money and effort. However some businesses tend, when something doesn't work as well as planned, to try it again but with more concerted effort - and invariably with results that are still not exceptional. How different the result could have been if they had identified a time when they did achieve an example of exceptional results, analysed what strengths had been at work, and then used them in the new context.

Some businesses may question if this works. Well, the research to date demonstrates it does, although the practice of identifying and using strengths in the way described above is not yet common across the business world. The key lies in having a rigorous process for unearthing your business's strengths and the management faith in them.

For some businesses this may mean questioning ‘sacred cows'. For example, does top down management training really work, or would training people in personal leadership enable them to manage their bosses successfully? Does the performance appraisal system get at the heart of people's real success, or does it dwell on their shortcomings?  Do competency frameworks allow for natural talents, or do they oblige people to clone their strengths into a system?

Whether your people feel really motivated, or motivation is still a problem you are grappling with, the broader question you need to consider is: "Should my business keep putting more effort into correcting what's not working, or start discovering what makes us successful, and do more of it?" The answer lies in the beliefs of your senior management team towards the business's potential. If their state of mind, intent, focus and objectives, become strengths driven, then anything can become possible.

About the writers:

Robert Ballentine and Harold Russell specialise in creating high powered businesses by modelling and applying the sources of success within the business.

For further information - www.strengthbasedbusiness.co.uk

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