To create a growth culture in a business, companies must foster “business builders,” according to Damien P. McLoughlin, professor of marketing at the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School in Ireland, who spoke at ONE18: The Alltech Ideas Conference in Lexington, Kentucky, in May.
McLoughlin defined business builders as people who are excited by risk and growth opportunities, are able to roll with the punches, are highly collaborative, have strong influencing skills and are passionate about their product or brand.
While it seems that all of a company’s employees should be business builders, McLoughlin said only about 2 percent of an organization’s employees are. Business builders are not on the senior leadership team, but also are not only sales people or innovators. They are located at critical decision points in an organization and are people who create disproportionate value by framing ideas and creating informal bonds that encourage collaboration and make the organization healthier and more productive.
So why aren’t they more business builders? McLoughlin said it’s because being a business builder is not a safe position to be in and not everyone wants to be there. He said CEOs are not business builders; business builders are usually lower down in the employee hierarchy and they broaden a company’s perspectives.
“I really like the idea of employees being in charge of things, and I like the idea of fostering broader perspectives,” McLoughlin said.
He said companies that have successful business builders must:
- Appropriately allocate talent and financial resources
- Match the best players to best opportunities
- Put talent and finance on equal footing
- Devalue hierarchy and promote meritocracy
McLoughlin also highlighted three questions for decisionmakers in business to ask:
- Do we take critical talent seriously in our organization?
- Do we know who our 2 percent is and the critical decisions they make?
- If we want to outperform the market, what is our outperforming talent strategy?
