Countless young, entrepreneurial and more innovative companies are participating in a paradigm-shifting strategy. These organizations have altered their priorities from a profit-centered focus to a team-centered focus. This paradigm shift is proving to be the reason why these team-centered companies are building better teams, and consequently building better products and services.

The secret to building the perfect team starts with changing your mentality. Good companies hire the best people for open positions. Great companies hire great people and find or create positions for them. As a manager, executive or founder, it is your responsibility to recognize potential and find a way to utilize to improve your organization. This activity should not be limited to the hiring for “open” positions. Companies that are poised for substantial growth acquire all-star players and provide them with an opportunity to use their skills, talents and experiences to improve your team, company culture and bottom line.

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The old adage in customer services has always been that “the customer is always right.” Does this still hold true? It is clearly evident that customers contribute to the lifeblood of all businesses, via revenue. Therefore, should customers have the dominant voice  always be considered right? At Input Ladder, we advocate that the customer shouldn’t always be right, just most of the time. There are multiple reasons for this.

First, most businesses, regardless of industry, cater to the needs of a very diverse demographic. Therefore, the customer base of these businesses will have differing perceptions of your brand, experiences with your brand, as well as expectations of your brand. Your business is built on a specific mission, vision and values. These values should not be compromised at any point, for no one. If you are asking yourself how not compromising your values correlates with the customer always being right, recall some of the more extreme requests that you have received from your customers. Have you had a customer ask you to adjust your product/service to reflect something other than what it was intended for? Have you had a customer expect you to bend your rules on something “because they didn’t know?” Have you had a customer attempt to verbally abuse, manipulate or disrespect your team members or staff?

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Input Ladder has become a big fan of the reputable interactive marketing agency BGT Partners. This agency has been featured on countless lists of the “Best Companies to Work For.” After reading articles about the company’s internal successes, including the recently published Advertising Age Magazine article, we decided to delve deeper to find out what makes it the best place to work for. In doing so, we hope to learn how to make our company better while providing you with insights to make your company better. With that being said, let’s get started.

BGT Partners is a 150-employee company that provides interactive marketing services for clients in a variety of industries. Some of these services include web design and development, online marketing and consulting, search engine management and optimization, along with many others. Of the company’s 150 employees, 25 different countries are represented through a diverse and multilingual staff. The company is divided into 4 offices across the country, including a Miami, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Despite having geographical and cultural differences, the company manages to maintain a cohesive company mission and values. Because of these things, BGT maintains a nearly 100% retention rate.

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November is right around the corner. It is an election year and there are midterm congressional and gubernatorial seats up for grabs. Because of the 24-hour news cycle and prominence of social media, we are all bombarded by political news in our everyday life. How can you prevent political ideologies from dominating the discussion within your office?

First, let’s begin by discussing why politics in the workplace can be a negative thing. The primary reason why companies and organizations should refrain from discussing politics in the office is because politics is like religion, people are extremely passionate of their ideas and often get offended or defensive when opposing ideas are advocated. This can lead to a tremendous distraction in terms of work productivity. When people get distracted by tumultuous conversations about politics, it is likely to consume their time and therefore remove them from their daily duties within the company. A second major reason as to why political conversations in the workplace should be avoided is because a majority view on any political issue can be translated or perceived as the company’s stance on a particular issue. This can be a very dangerous thing. Just as employees may be passionate about their politics, customers are too. If a perception becomes dominant that a particular company has its political leanings in a specific direction, there can be an affect as to your bottom line.

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Some of your employees and customers probably have a bigger smile on their face on Monday mornings. It may be due to the fact that their Saturday and Sunday was packed with football and their Monday night will be too. Yes, football season has begun. Why should you care? This is an opportunity to use the social excitement of college and professional football to benefit your company. Here are 10 ways to use the football season to improve employee and customer satisfaction:

For Employees

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Regardless of the relationship you may think you have with your boss, maintaining a sense of professionalism at all times is always necessary. Knowing what you can and cannot say is critical for your success. Just because you and your boss have a great relationship doesn’t mean that you can say what you feel. Take caution when you are discussing things of serious matters. The following is a list of 10 phrases that your boss never wants to hear. In the instance that you have to express the following ideas, we have also listed a better way of saying it:

1. “This is not in my job description.”

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End-of-the-week initiatives like Casual Fridays are designed to excite and often inspire employees to enjoy the company culture. Some companies maintain a “jeans acceptable” policy for Friday while other companies may offer catered lunches or in-house lunch parties. While all these things can really excite employees, we conceive an alternative approach to improve employee morale as well as employee productivity.

These common initiatives of celebrating Friday workdays appear to be based on the logic that the end of the week is when employees are happier because the weekend is here. Therefore the company should use that day to correlate the employees’ happiness with the company’s workplace. However, we think that this strategy is counter-intuitive to productivity. We advocate that companies should shift their focus on creating fun and exciting initiatives for the one day of the week that is often notable for being the most dreadful day for employees: Monday.

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Managers perform annual (or quarterly) performance reviews to not only inform the employee of their successes and failures, but to also learn about what the company can do better, in the eyes of the employee. This feedback is essential because the the company can’t always assume that it has an accurate reading of employee morale and if it is as efficient as possible. Furthermore, this discourse should not be limited to organizations and employees. It should be extended to communities and its residents, because synonymously, communities can’t successfully grow without the voice of its residents.

Whether it may be at a city commissioner’s meeting, local government press conference,  the municipality’s website, or by dialing your local officials, there are countless ways in which residents can engage their community. If there is something that is occurring in your city or neighborhood that you don’t agree with, let your voice be known. If there is a better or more productive method of doing something, speak up. As a citizen of your nation, as a resident of your city and as a member of your community, you have a civic obligation to provide your opinion.

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