Growth – the process of something becoming bigger, developing and increasing. In order to grow, the right ingredients are required to provide all of the essentials for proper development. Whether it is a growing baby, child, or company, the same holds true. The right ingredients are needed, including the environment, which plays a critical role.
At Draper, Growth is one of our core values. We seek out, explore, and leverage opportunities to continually grow and develop our employees. We strive to empower our employees to learn and adapt through our shared experiences. We invest in our people and actively promote their development and understand that the employee is the cornerstone of Draper.
Draper Inc., located in Spiceland, Indiana, has a history of steady growth since 1902. When considering growth, pace is important. Growth that happens too slowly creates a stagnant company, yet growth that transpires too quickly may lead to shortcuts and an unsustainable path. As a family-owned company, we care about our people and are committed to each person’s individual growth and our collective growth as a team.
Draper is so committed to the growth and development of our employees that all management staff recently underwent 8 sessions of all-day leadership training over a 6-month period that we call Draper Leadership Academy. We learned about The Predictive Index ® (PI) Behavioral Assessment and how to use it to gain self-awareness. We learned how to build better relationships and more effective communication with the use of PI and other tools. We learned the difference between training, mentoring, counseling, and coaching. The Draper management team also embraced learning how to have hard conversations, tools for identifying strengths and weaknesses within our teams and ended with a session on change management. Continuing to grow in our leadership capabilities is important to Draper.
Draper is also committed to finding opportunities for individual contributors who show great leadership potential through our new Emerging Leaders Program. Potential candidates need to prove that they have great performance, attendance, core values, leader capabilities and Draper philosophy that the organization has established. There is a process to identify those people in all areas of the business. After they are identified, we put them through a shorter version of Draper Leadership Academy that is suitable to meet them where they are in their careers.
John Maxwell is the author of several books on leadership. He says, “The single biggest way to impact an organization is to focus on leadership development.” And in his book, “The Infinite Game,” well-known inspirational speaker Simon Sinek says that “Leaders are not responsible for the results. Leaders are responsible for the people who are responsible for the results.” For these reasons, Draper is enhancing the focus that we put on our people internally to help them see what they are capable of. Draper has also invested in a full-time Organizational Development manager that will focus on helping our leaders to improve our leadership skills, develop coaching, mentoring and advancement opportunities, and support the management team in the development of their staff.
Here at Draper, buildings have been built, equipment purchased, and faces have changed, but one thing is constant: our culture and our commitment to steady growth for excellence. This starts with and is solely reliant on our people, who we consider the foundation for steady growth.
As a core value to the team at Draper, Growth is a non-negotiable that we appreciate and focus on daily.
