Rally Cry: Evolve!
In 2023, Mitel, like every other company, was navigating significant change. We introduced a new company strategy and needed to infuse our employees with fresh energy. Senior leaders advised that we needed a Rally Cry—something we could use to amp everyone up all year. Working with leaders, we landed on “Evolve!” as the cry. Our CEO asked me to write a “manifesto” about what it meant to us to help the executive team to inspire their own take.
You can read the full manifesto along with leadership thought starters and the script the CEO ultimately used to introduce it to employees at the button above.
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Evolve! An Excerpt
…Evolve feels more positive than “change.” Change can be scary, full of unknowns, sometimes chaotic, and exhausting. We’ve all experienced a lot of change lately, inside and outside of Mitel, leaving people feeling a little burnt out, unclear about the current state of things, on edge that more change is coming, and generally tired. Change is on our minds, and we’d prefer that it wasn’t. Go away, Change.
Alternatively, evolving feels like growth (and Growth is one of our values). It feels like something working out. Like good change, or positive improvement. Resilience. It feels a little like you solved a puzzle, and now you get a prize! You were faced with a challenge, and you figured it out, and you get to stay in the game. You beat something that was coming to get you! It feels energizing and like something you want to be a part of. It makes us want to be included and to participate. If you’re interacting with a person or business that has evolved, you might be impressed or delighted. We love when people grow and improve (especially when it positively impacts our experience). It makes us leave a positive Yelp review and leaves us wanting more.
And yet… there’s a subtle undertone of “Evolve or die.” If a species can’t evolve, it will go the way of the dodo bird. If a business can’t evolve, or adapt to the change going on around it, it’s not going to make it. We’re all acutely aware of this coming out of the pandemic. Our favorite restaurants and local businesses are gone. We see what’s happening with tech layoffs right now. There are real, personal consequences if we don’t evolve, and they provide incentive for us to jump in and ask, “What do we need to do?”
Mitel has been here for 50 years. Some of us have been here that long, but most of us haven’t – and some of us haven’t even been alive that long. That means our perspective of time is shorter and we don’t see the whole picture. If we did, we’d realize any company (or even person) that’s been around for 50 years had to evolve. In fact… isn’t there a story about Mitel starting with a lawnmower? We don’t sell those today, but we’re still here.
In recent history – the chunk of time we’re all more familiar with – Mitel’s evolved from a phone peddler (hardware) to a communications product vendor (+software) to a communications solutions provider (and so much more). We’ve evolved from having a traditional office workforce to having a connected hybrid workforce like many of our customers. How else have we evolved?…
