Written by Miguel Van Damme
Take a look at different company websites. I am sure you will find that most companies like to position themselves as a great employer, who takes care of its employees and wants them to be happy. Is this just a matter of wanting to look good? Or is it true? Hard to say.
What I can say is that at BrightWolves, we genuinely believe in our BRIGHT [1] vision. We take our promise to develop our team – the Wolves – to their full potential very seriously. Last week during the management meeting, I surprised myself as it turned out that we spent almost 75% of the time talking about the Wolves, our people. How are they doing? Are they growing and developing? Can they create a sustainable impact on their clients? The ultimate question we always ask is: are they SUPERHAPPY [2]?
What does it mean to be a SUPERHAPPY WOLF?
You might wonder now why we do not just want wolves to be happy but superhappy. Is a happy wolf not enough? Not to us. Four different dimensions characterize Superhappiness: sustainable impact, personal development, wholeness, and life balance.
Sustainable Impact
The sustainable impact can be assessed with a few questions. Are we creating a positive and lasting impact on the client's organization? Is the BrightWolves consultant able to unlock complex situations and bring the client organization to the next level? How can BrightWolves as an organization support the consultant to achieve sustainable impact?
Concretely, this translates into discussions with clients during which we raise our concerns about our engagement's lasting impact. It often allows us to get more things done. For example, our relentless commitment to have "sustainable impact" resulted in a different project approach at an industrial services firm. We shifted the scope from "cost-cutting" to an "employee engagement" project. The results were stellar. Productivity and NPS increased double-digit in a few months.
Personal Development
We believe it is crucial to allow our Wolves to acquire new skills. Only by continuously growing their skillset, Wolves can reach their full potential. At BrightWolves, we ensure sufficient development opportunities, both internally and externally, with our clients.
On the one hand, this means that we are careful to give our BrightWolves consultants the right level of challenges on client engagements. On the other hand, it means that we do not train our wolves to follow a fixed/rigid approach that they should replicate from one project to another. Training should focus on acquiring different skills that can be used and further developed during challenging client engagements. Moreover, personal development should be an open discussion where the Wolves can have a say.
Wholeness
Inspired by Frédéric Laloux's bestseller book "Reinventing Organizations", we strive to create an environment in which every Wolf can be himself/herself at work. Our responsibility is to create a safe space for everyone where it is okay to be vulnerable and have real, authentic, and sometimes even difficult, conversations.
Frédéric Laloux explains this very clearly in his book: "Historically, organizations have always been places where people showed up wearing a mask… people often feel they have to shut out part of who they are when they dress for work in the morning…They require us to show a masculine resolve, to display determination and strength, and to hide doubts and vulnerability." We do not want our Wolves to feel they have to wear a mask.
Life Balance
At BrightWolves, we do not use the traditional wording of having a work-life balance. We believe that work is an integral part of life. This does not mean that there is no life outside work, but that work should be fun, rewarding, motivating, etc. While the life balance will strongly depend on the client engagements, we aim to provide every Wolf with the personal leadership tools to help them succeed at achieving this balance.
One of the mandatory training for all new joiners is "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" training after Stephen Covey's book. We believe this training helps to find a balance between all the different aspects of your life. People who followed the training are enthusiastic. Last year, we wrote a specific article [3] about the 7 habits training.
Making long-term plans for your career and life is tricky as many things change continuously. Yet, we firmly believe that BrightWolves' moral obligation is to provide promising opportunities to every Wolf and help him or her reach the ultimate goal of SUPERHAPINESS, based on sustainable impact, personal development, wholeness, and life balance. Want to know more? Do not hesitate to grab a virtual coffee with one of our Wolves!
[1] https://www.brightwolves.com/join-us [2] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Superhappy