Great people

“The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.”
Bob Marley

One of the things helping us at Advantage better communicate who we are is the tagline we started using in 2019 after years of struggling with how to quickly describe our brand to potential customers: “We help organizations develop great people.”

Those 6 words took years to conceptualize but they continue to resonate more fully each time we help deliver a successful learning & development initiative or work to help an organization reach new goals. Recently, though, one of our partners began to struggle with them and shared her feelings with a member of our marketing team.

“Developing ‘great people’ feels a little off,” she wrote in an email. “Gandhi is a great person. Do we really develop great people?  Maybe I’m not bold enough to make that statement. Or is it about enabling people to do great work?”

Reflecting on and validating her concerns, we began a valuable discussion to explore how and why helping organizations develop great people is at the heart of what we do. And we realized we could more fully own those words by giving them some context:

By great people we don’t mean we help your people become iconic, world-changing figures like Ghandi. It’s the spirit behind those words we are aiming for. Great people are all around us, doing small things in great ways, helping others realize their potential, making a difference.

And why focus on great people not great work? Because talent development has become a holistic endeavor. The solutions we help implement are not typically task-oriented but instead focus on developing the whole person. And, it’s great people who create great organizations.

Yes, our tagline IS bold but so are the solutions by our thought leader partners we are proud to represent. They help people build their emotional intelligence, multiply the ability of others to contribute, communicate and influence more effectively, make better decisions, foster a sense of inclusion, build community, etc. They offer bold changes to people’s lives.

Our CEO Jonathan Hodge describes it best: “We’ve always talked about empowering people to do the best work of their lives. However, I think it’s important, that choice of words relative to developing great people, because at the end of the day in our business, it’s really about presenting somebody with both an experience and an opportunity to learn something or to apply something, or to take an action that’s going to fundamentally improve their ability to perform in their job and therefore be more successful, contribute that to the rest of the organization, and frankly, be happier.

“It might sound a little lofty or a maybe a little bit idealistic, but that’s what connects all of us together and that’s why we we’ve joined Advantage, because we get the ability to work on making great people’s lives even better.”

How is your organization communicating the heart of what you do? We’d love to hear about it!

One great thing for 06.21.22 – Simon Sinek: A QUICK way to find your WHY
“Believe it or not, you already have a profound impact on the lives of some of the people who are closest to you – you just have to ask!”