Your No. 1 Growth Killer Isn't What You Think

It isn’t about instituting Draconian policies or restricting your employees’ Facebook access. It’s about something far more difficult to accomplish, yet far more rewarding in the long run: people, purpose, profits and play.

By Chuck Runyon and Dave Mortensen

A friend of ours keeps a running list of “things people believe about themselves.” We all think we’re good drivers. We all think we don’t have an accent. We all think we’re easy to live with. And we all think everybody else takes way longer at the ATM. When it comes to franchisors, we all think our products are getting more commoditized, our competition is getting tougher and we could be growing faster if it weren’t for those pesky joint-employer guidelines, minimum wage statutes, taxes and overtime laws.

Not to diminish those important issues, but in our experience, your biggest growth killer isn’t on that list, and it doesn’t attack from the outside. In fact, this internal enemy didn’t even have a name until we recently gave it one: “Undertime.”

Engaged Employees Outperform

Undertime is the amount of money you pay for disengaged workers who are present only physically. Nearly 90 percent of employees admit to wasting time at work, 70 percent say they aren’t engaged in their jobs, and one-in-five spend a whopping two-to-four hours a day on non-work-related activities. And this is important, because companies with engaged employees outperform those without by up to 202 percent.

Since our humble beginnings in 2002, Anytime Fitness has grown to more than 3 million members using 3,500 gyms in 50 states and 30 countries. You could credit our status as the world’s fastest-growing fitness club franchise to our model of offering affordable, 24/7 gym access in a small footprint. But many others have copied that model and either gone out of business or hit a ceiling while our growth has actually accelerated.

Why?

Simple: We've cracked the code on defeating undertime. And it isn’t about instituting Draconian policies or restricting your employees’ Facebook access. It’s about something far more difficult to accomplish, yet far more rewarding in the long run: people, purpose, profits and play.

People

Most business leaders talk the talk about valuing their people, but very few walk the walk. To be a truly people-centric organization, you need to see your employees as people, not “headcount.” We made this shift about seven years into our business, when our growth seemed to be stagnating and our culture needed refreshing. And it led to the best stretch of growth we’ve ever seen, despite greater competition.

On a big-picture scale, one thing we highly recommend is devoting at least 0.5 percent of your revenues toward developing your people as people. At Anytime Fitness, those funds might pay for an accountant to learn a new software program, but they also might pay for her to get guitar lessons. When it comes to boosting engagement and productivity, one type of development isn’t more relevant than the other. In fact, the guitar lessons may reap bigger dividends.

On a day-to-day basis, we recommend following something we call CAT: communication, alignment and trust. For example:

•   Communication: Disregard titles and tenures in your company meetings. Treat all input as having equal value.
•   Alignment: Keep yourself aligned with employee sentiment — and keep employees on board with your culture — by giving them a way to provide anonymous feedback. We recently updated our maternity/paternity policy when someone challenged whether our existing one was truly aligned with our mission to improve the world’s self-esteem.
•   Trust: If a handful of people is violating a policy (e.g. manipulating expense reports), deal with them individually; don’t punish everybody by stiffening the policy. Employers lean on policy. Leaders focus on trust.

Purpose

People are always amazed to learn that over 3,000 Anytime Fitness employees, franchisees and members have tattooed our “Runningman” logo on their bodies. But it’s true. And they don’t get inked because they think we have the best treadmills. They do it because they feel a sense of purpose around our brand.

This is essential for any business today. And no matter what industry you’re in, you can start with these three steps.

1. “George Bailey” yourself.

In the popular movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” leading character George Bailey experiences a world in which he’s never been born. The best way to start seeing your company’s purpose is to ask, “What would happen if we didn’t exist?”

2. “BASF” yourself.

A famous commercial from the ’90s stated: “We don’t make the plane; we make it lighter. We don’t make the carpet; we make it tougher. At BASF, we don’t make a lot of the products you buy; we make a lot of the products you buy better.” These ads were effective because they made chemicals and plastics seem relevant — even sexy. How does your company, product or service “make things better?”

3. “Cause” yourself.

Even if your company is small, there’s a micro-charity around the corner that would kill to have your contributions, volunteer work or in-kind services. Want to start your own foundation or 501(c)(3) but don’t have the resources? There’s probably an existing one that you can partner with, as we partnered with Tee It Up for the Troops a few years ago.

Profits

Profits are arguably the most important “P,” because they make all the others possible. But profits are also easy to over-value and under-define. For example, we used to think that you hired people to grow profits — until the world of franchising made us realize that our franchisees don’t work for us; we work for them. Now, we understand that our success is 100 percent tied to the success of each of our franchise owners. So, we improve profits by investing in tools and training to support them.

Keep in mind that support doesn’t necessarily mean more money. Today’s most valuable currency is lifestyle, so your people might see more value in a good flex-time policy than in a bump in salary. We tell our people that they’ll never have to miss life’s most important moments, and we mean it.

Play

Play is the magical elixir that enhances productivity, creativity, collaboration, connection, engagement and retention -- and we’ve always held it in high regard (we value sense of humor so much, we actually look for it in the interview process). But the key to instilling a sense of play in your organization isn’t simply buying ping pong tables or having Hawaiian Shirt Fridays. Other forms of play exist, such as:

1. Productive Play
Do more creative brainstorming. You never know when a “silly” idea might lead to a brilliant solution.

2. Team-Building Play
Parties, volunteer work and charity events can strengthen your sense of purpose, but they also build teamwork along the way.

3. Competitive Play
We think of ourselves as corporate athletes, and internal sporting events like golf, basketball, kickball, softball and Tough Mudders fuel our competitive drive.

The Rest of the Story

We’ve only scratched the surface on the power of the four Ps in the article. The truth is, we could write an entire book on the topic. What’s that, we have? Oh right. To get the whole story on how the four Ps can unlock your growth potential, we encourage you to read our new book: “Love Work: Inspire a High-Performing Culture at the Center of People, Purpose, Profits, and Play.” It’s now available on Amazon, and we think you’ll love it.

Chuck Runyon is CEO and Dave Mortensen is President of Anytime Fitness. Chuck and Dave have been featured on ABC’s Secret Millionaire and Be The Boss, Canada, and they are national speakers on issues of leadership, culture and employee engagement.