Ever get to the point where you know your business so well that everything is obvious? Its clear where the industry is heading, its easy to see where the new opportunities are and its no mystery how to keep on growing the business.
This can be dangerous, very dangerous for the long term health of your business. Truth is even the most accurate expert is never correct all the time. Even if someone is spot on 80% of the time that other 20% could mean critical errors of judgement that cannot be corrected without a significant investment of time and energy.
For this reason success can be difficult to handle! We can become so sure of ourselves that we think we are invincible. This is not confidence based on proven skills but the blindness of pride although we can easily confuse the two.
Pride is that sense that “I know it all and we`ll do things my way”. This then leads to a lack of flexibility in our approach so we fail to adapt to evidence that our strategy is not working as well as we expected. We keep on pushing our original ideas anyway even in the face of imminent failure.
How does this happen?
Instead of having an external frame of reference that involves tracking and adapting to feedback we get locked into an internal frame of reference where we fixate on our vision of how we want things to be and then refuse to adapt to the world – we expect the world to change to adapt itself to our vision!
And this is why we need to be careful when we feel that we know it all. Yes, confidence and enthusiasm are great but make sure you adapt to the marketplace if there is evidence that you`ve got this one wrong.
The best outlook to have is that of someone who is confident, capable and highly flexible. Fixate on your ultimate goal but be open to changing your approach. Be convinced you can achieve your goal but know that new and better ways to succeed may become obvious later as you move forward.
Whenever you are convinced that you know it all pause for a moment. Let go of being so smart and remind yourself that flexibility is key. You didn`t build a successful business without being tenacious and flexible. To do even better requires the same beginner`s mind – an open mind that adapts to feedback not one that holds onto a fixed opinion even in the face of poor results.
Tags: boss thinking skills
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As entrepreneurs we are a bunch of positive people. We aim high, expect the best and have the tenacity to keep going until we get what we want. These qualities allow us to persist and make things happen even when others doubt our sanity!
This is a great outlook to have as long as we also notice when we are kidding ourselves. Yes, its very easy to become so convinced that our dreams will come true that we fail to notice when we are in fact not making progress.
We may be stuck and tell ourselves that we are simply pausing for breath even though it is clear we are executing poorly and not seeing evidence we are on the right track. We don`t see the writing on the wall because we hope everything will change for the better.
Are you hoping and dreaming business will improve? Are you positively assuming ongoing problems will resolve themselves? Do you hang on in the hope that some random event will give you a sales boost?
If you want to run your business this way you run the risk of slowly but surely burning through cash until it gets so serious that you have to spring into action and take heroic actions to fix the problems.
You tell yourself: ” I always pull through when the pressure is on . There is no need to worry!”
Being an entrepreneur is an emotional roller coaster ride as it is so it is always good to recognise when you are living on hope and train yourself to objectively measure and track your progress when you are getting too emotional.
Ask yourself: “Am I hoping things will improve or am I busy implementing a solid plan? Am I tracking the results and adjusting my approach if need be?”
Simply get better at observing your own feelings and behavior and you`ll spot it when you are hoping rather than planning for better times. You`ll notice when you are dreaming, which is good, as long as you are not dreaming and waiting for a lucky break when you need to be implementing.
Dream big, implement solid plans and constantly adapt to the business environment. When we focus our minds on these key fundamentals and keep improving we become highly skilled business owners.
As you can see, hope has no place in this success mindset.
Tags: tricks of the mind
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The most intelligent are not the most successful in business. Neither are the strongest whether that be physically or emotionally. The ones who thrive and keep on winning in the long term are the most adaptable. And adapting to change sounds easier than it is.
We see this all the time when we look at the business environment over longer time frames. Take a look at any industry over a 50 year period and notice how few companies are still independent. The same applies to family run small businesses. It is a rare business that is still leading the way after the handover of power to the offspring of the owners, even fewer continue when the next generation takes over.
This has important implications for how you manage your business right now today. Unless you face up to the normal tendency for inertia to set in, this resistance to change can slowly but surely erode your success until it is too late to recover. And it can happen without you even noticing.
Once we have a successful formula what do we want to do? We want to maintain it and enjoy our well earned success. Nothing wrong with that for a while but that desire to keep the business as it is represents a resistance to change that is ultimately destructive.
And the most subtle resistance to change could be what costs you more and more sales before you know what is happening because you refuse to accept that a key business strategy is becoming less effective. You may have so much resistance to this change that you justify the sales slowdown as a temporary blip – nothing to worry about.
This is when adapting to change breaks down – denial of the facts, hoping everything will return to “normal” and convincing yourself that you are correct when the facts say otherwise are all subtle forms of resistance. And very expensive if you fail to face the changes you do not want to look at.
You built a successful business by adapting to change. Continue to anticipate change, continue to welcome change and continue to strategise what is coming next and you can have a business that is still growing while your competitors wonder what happened.
Accept that ignoring change or avoiding it will cost you later if not sooner. Keep an eye out for what is changing, look for threats to your business model and find the emerging opportunities that are in the early stages of revealing themselves.
And be thankful. Most of your competitors resist change too! They are too busy running their companies to look ahead and adapt. This gives you first mover advantage. Take it now!
Tags: resistance to change
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You`re a business owner doing seven figures in sales and you know what you`re doing – you have the success to prove it. Life is good but still you know you could be doing better and you want to step up your game.
You want to do even better to see how good you can get and to go from just making money to becoming a powerful business person. You know this can happen and you`ve suspected that using more of your untapped potential is the answer; not working smarter, harder or faster.
At BossMind.com we will show you fast and powerful ways to use much more of your mind. As long as you are open to new ways of thinking you can access more of your potential to take your business forward.
You`ll feel more in control, be less stressed and enjoy work more. Solving difficult problems will be fun again and your staff will wonder at how you make it seem so easy.
Best of all, you`ll see profits grow in direct correlation to the rate at which you use more of your mind. Grow your Boss Mind and you will see that business growth follows.
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