What Is Success?

Businesses and nonprofits have one thing in common. Both are run by people. By design we as people have limited time and resources. Therefore we must prioritize our time. For the last three months this writer has been learning the specifics of government contracting.  It is no elusive, but it does require knowledge of practical elements in order to achieve success.

What is success? And who determines who or which business is successful. Often the determination is made by the numbers on the balance sheet. There are however other measures of success: fulfillment, number of people served, impact if the business or nonprofit ceased to exist.

Our business is about people, bringing value to those we serve and personal enjoyment. We come from a belief that if doing what you do well, or are called to do will in turn be profitable. Therefore, recent curricula was developed for a three part nonprofit course. Following that design we turned to our love of gardening, nature, people, education, and sustainability and designed a comprehensive course on gardening, soil building, handicap access that can be taught to groups, in a classroom, apartment, church or other nonprofit setting etc. and lastly, a community action course for churches that wish to become naturally engaged by serving on behalf of and along side community partners.

A Humane Appraisal Process

A fair appraisal process should have one professional development goal such as mastering a new technology, and one operations goal that helps move the company forward such as a sales goal. Lastly it should contain one area for improvement. Public speaking is a fear for some people. Overcoming that fear through practice would be an example of addressing a weak area. The first two goals should be the basis for measuring employee performance. The third should become one basis for reward. Rewards come in a lot of packages-a pay raise, promotion, paid training opportunities or a special trip. It can be anything that encourages and motivates a person to want to improve skills that add value in the workplace. The next two posts are related to this topic. The first is on healing after difficult interactions at work. The second is what character traits to look for in supervisors to prevent problems in the first place. Watch for our upcoming post on planning for disasters.