Building a truly winning team

For most companies, people really represent the only sustainable source of competitive advantage. More than all your brands, technologies, patents, buildings or equipment, your team is the one factor that can truly make a difference and get your company ahead.

Recent business history is full of companies that, despite an impressive technological edge, a favorable cost position or a solid product portfolio, fail miserably in favor of supposedly weaker competitors. Conversely, small, resources-poor entrepreneurial structures sometimes achieve extraordinary results. The difference between the two? An extraordinary ability to leverage and mobilize their human resources and talents.

Building a winning team is not about hiring the best and the brightest or offering the highest salaries and the sexiest titles. We, at Synthesix, believe it has to do with just one fundamental question: Is there a meaning to what we do here?

Yes, fundamentally, people work to make a living. But ultimately, we all need our work to have a meaning. The time and passion that we dedicate to our professional lives is far too important for most of us to accept meaningless work. We all need our job to be a source of pride and fulfillment, to give us the ability to participate in something bigger and more meaningful. And if it doesn’t, well, we’ll just jump on the next opportunity that passes by.

And still, in many companies, meaning seems to be in short supply. Unclear strategic direction, clumsy communication, conflictual priorities, unmanageable pressure on results… All these issues combine to raise doubts, create a blurred vision and contribute to removing whatever meaning employees could still find in their position.

To restore meaning to the job: this should be the first priority and prime source of concern of a leader. This is because, when work has a meaning, energy flows, priorities align themselves magically and collaboration flourishes.

An interest in discussing meaning with experts? Make an appointment. Talk to us. We do know a thing or two about restoring meaning in an organization…

Developing profitable growth options

We live in a complex world. Across the world, companies generally face an unheard level of competitive intensity, whatever their industry.

In the last 20 years, most sectors have seen their playing field become global. This accelerated internationalization of the economy, coupled with fabulous developments in information and communication technologies, created an immense challenge for companies to stay on top. In the last 5 years, the economic crisis dramatically worsened this picture.

Nowadays, in most sectors of the economy, companies simultaneously face fierce competitors that are structurally able to deliver similar goods and services for a lower cost, increasingly demanding customers with reduced purchasing budgets and cash constraints, and growing investment needs to keep up with technological developments.

In such a challenging environment, old recipes can’t suffice anymore. What brought you to where you are today, what made you successful in the past, is unlikely to help you tomorrow. Worse, it might even lead to your demise. 

Many executives and managers put themselves in a wait and see position. “Let’s wait until this one passes…” Bad news: it won’t pass. These are the new rules. And they are here to stay. Because the evolutions we face are largely structural.

And more than ever, you need to grow…

Growth is the only way ahead. Because you just cannot keep on cutting costs and reducing staff. Because without growth, you’ll lose your best talent and your technological edge. Because without growth, you’ll become insignificant. And because, after more than 5 years of operating in a crisis mode, you might miss the upcoming growth opportunities if you don’t make yourself ready for them.