ARE YOU RAINFOREST COMPLIANT?
“Just when you think you’ve heard it all, along comes someone with a rare and refreshing way of seeing the world around them in a practical way that can truly help folks succeed in life and business. Rainforest Strategy could certainly be the planet’s most successful business model. Anyone can improve both their effectiveness and their productivity by applying the success secrets Michael Pink learned in the rainforest. His understanding of the rainforest and its application to structuring and conducting business in today’s world can benefit business leaders at all levels.”
?What Does it Mean to be Rainforest Compliant?
We use that question as a way of asking the following…
• Are you getting the most from what you have? (Efficiency)
• Are your efforts and enterprises truly fruitful? (Effectiveness)
• Are you gaining leverage and advantage from others? (Relationships)
• Are you self-replicating? (Multiplication)
• Are you managing your energy wisely? (Endurance)
• Are you in control of your time and your life? (Well being)
• Are you attracting the business and customers you need? (Marketing)
• Are you accomplishing your goals? (Productivity)
Our trained consultants work with you to regain your edge, renew your strength and get your team focused on accomplishing the vision. We do a comprehensive analysis of the health of your business in the following areas. Here is what we look at…
Strategic Vision
In the rainforest, everything grows toward the light. Light allows vision and revelation. Do you have a clear and compelling vision that is part of the corporate discussion, where everyone knows their role in the vision and how they are measured by it? If not, we can help you develop that. This is not a vision statement for the employee handbook. It is a life giving description that describes the “what” and answers the “why”. Part of our process includes helping you answer these seven questions…
1. WHO do we serve internally and externally?
2. WHY do we serve those interests?
3. WHERE are the boundaries of our reach?
4. HOW will we accomplish the vision?
5. WHEN will we know if we have succeeded?
6. WHAT does that look like from all angles?
7. WHAT is our contribution to the world around us?
Fungigation
In the rainforest, fungus is a specialist that facilitates the quick turnover of nutrients. Your ability to turn over resources quickly can greatly affect your success. This is not limited to manufacturing processes, although certainly applicable, but also to your ability to redeploy any asset whether capital, inventory or personnel from a non-functioning or low producing asset into a high functioning one.
Sometimes lost profit can be turned around simply through repurposing a product, refocusing a service, redirecting an asset, etc. When a space opens up on the forest floor, opportunity abounds. We will help you seize those opportunities.
Additionally, we look for blockages to growth… Things like internal communication issues between departments, how knowledgeable the staff is with respect to their job function, what training they may need, how they can be tested and measured, etc. We can create training programs for any facet of the business complete with testing mechanisms and review processes.
Photosynthesis Factor
Photosynthesis is the process of combining light, water and CO2 and creating tangible mass like leaves, fruit, wood, flowers, etc. It is based on very predictable, exact and replicatable laws that are consistently applied to produce a consistent result.
In business, this is the science of business. The utilization of proven processes and procedures to produce a known, predictable and reliable result. When you have a good process that everyone follows, you have “process equity”. When you have “process equity” and a key employee leaves, the process doesn’t leave with them. Process equity protects you. We can help you define a process for every key function of the business from sales to paper flow, etc., to build reliable and predictable results that won’t evaporate when key employees leave your employ.
Pest & Pathogens Analysis
There are basically only two things that can limit growth and production in the rainforest… Pests & Pathogens. Pests slow your productivity down and consume what you produce, while pathogens affect your ability to produce at all. In rainforest studies, plants that were protected from pests grew ten times faster than plants that were unprotected.
In business, pests are interruptions that consume our time and distract our attention. According to Time magazine, the average worker loses 28% of their day to interruptions. You already know what the pests are. We can do a pest analysis and help your team set up “No Pest Zones” and implement seven pest reduction strategies to help your productivity soar. You may also have employees on staff that are draining the life out of the rest of the team through negativity or poor work habits. We can help identify internal threats and help you deal with them appropriately, while mitigating the risk by establishing process equity.
Strangler Fig
In the rainforest, individual trees and even species progress through four seasons or cycles. It begins with an innovation season where a new plant or species is introduced or a major gap opens in the rainforest due to clearing or a fallen tree for example. The innovator plants seize that opportunity, take that ground and quickly step into the second phase of rapid growth. Eventually once its position is established it enters the maturity phase, a period of extended productivity and refinement. Finally however, it comes to the end of its useful life and is enters what some call the renewal phase where it is repurposed for another mission, (becomes the nutrient base for future trees).
Every person and business progresses through the same four phases. An innovative idea is introduced. If accepted, it experiences rapid growth. That leads to multiple refinements and improvements as it matures, but eventually that innovation becomes obsolete and must be replaced by another innovation or the company will face extinction. Knowing what season you, your business, your industry and your personnel are in and planning accordingly are crucial for success. We will help you get in sync for optimum results.
Brazil Nut Effect
Brazil nuts would cease to exist without a mutualistic relationship with the agouti, a small squirrel like creature that is the only animal in the rainforest with sharp enough teeth and a strong enough jaw to crack open the pod that holds roughly 20 Brazil nuts in it. The agouti trades its mobility and boundless energy which it has in excess for the exclusive rights and limitless access to one of the richest food sources in the rainforest, the Brazil nut.
Twenty percent of the revenues produced by Fortune 500 companies come from either symbiotic or mutualistic alliances. Others do very well with opportunistic relationships that mimic what we see in the rainforest as well. We can show you how to leverage what you have in abundance but are getting little return on (compared to what’s possible) and exchange that for what you need most but may not be able to afford. We can also strategize with you to identify possible opportunistic, symbiotic and mutualistic relationships to grow your business.
The Orchid Element
“In the rainforest”, Dr. Fortunato of the Smithsonian World Headquarters for Tropical Research said, “color is very expensive. Some trees will drop all their leaves just to produce color in the form of flowers.” She called it “marketing”.
What is inescapable as you walk through the rainforest is the magnetic, alluring draw that orchids have on you as they draw you to themselves. If you’re a pollinator, they have done their job. At the Rainforest Institute, our job includes helping you make your sales and marketing efforts simply irresistible!
We can evaluate the message your sales staff is communicating, how uniform and consistent it is, and more importantly, how effective it is. Are you using right brain communication techniques or only left brain linear methods? We can also evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing communications by asking the following seven questions…
1. Are you making a powerful promise that is worthy of attention?
2. Are you offering a compelling solution?
3. Have you outlined meaningful benefits?
4. Have you established impeccable credibility?
5. Did you craft an irresistible offer?
6. Did you make your case for urgency?
7. Did you give a clarion call to action?
The Rainforest Institute can evaluate your current collateral materials and marketing position, and help you create the online presence and offline image best suited for your company and industry. To find out if this or any aspect of our Rainforest Compliance Analysis is right for you,
Fill out this contact form for a free 30 minute interview.
