On a hike through Muir Woods, a redwood forest, I (Eva Demandt) was inspired by the majesty of the redwood tree. Its strength, timeless lifespan and ability to adjust to changes in the external environment. It made me reflect upon how companies should be more like a redwood tree – strong and growing due to a solid foundation, a long term orientation and the ability to adjust to shifts in the external business landscape.
Soon after Redwood Advising was established to ensure that companies hire for the best cultural fit and greatest performance so companies can reach business objectives within any business environment.
A redwood symbolises the best of what a well-performing company is:
- Strong and tall – true strengths. People should use and develop their talents at work. People can only perform from their strengths and research shows how working from your talents is the smallest thing you can do to make the biggest difference in performance.
- Unique since it contains pollen and seed cones on the same plant. It can, in fact, bring itself to life! So should people and companies. A person performing tasks aligned with business objectives by using his/hers talents will generate value and ‘life’ to a company. At the same time research shows that people working from and developing their talents are more engaged and ‘alive’ at work.
- Everlasting with a timeless lifespan due to fire-resistant wood and bark. A company must also adjust its organisation, workforce and activities to changing market conditions in order to stay alive.
- As a tree a redwood constantly direct its growth towards the light and redwoods, therefore, grow and shape differently depending on the light environment. Similarly, a company should be like this and provide a vision of a long-term strategy, yet at the same time be flexible and quickly adapt to new opportunities.
Redwood Advising is founded on these thoughts. The redwood enables me to see how I can help in building strong companies in the new economy by combining my experience in executing business strategy with strength based hiring and people management.
