It has been over 50,000 since human beings lived in caves. All those years ago, life was pretty much about survival – each morning our ancestors would emerge from their caves and scan the horizon for imminent danger. Although things have changed a lot in our external environment in the last few thousand years, in many ways, the wiring in our brains has not. In fact, 90% of what you and I do on a day to day basis is still based on that ancient wiring and survival mentality and it is precisely this legacy that needs to be re-directed to prevent self sabotage from holding you back, personally and professionally.
You see our brains are wired to spot and avoid danger. It is because of these primitive instincts that we all have a tendency toward self sabotage.
Even though the danger may not be “life or death”, we see this dynamic play out in our work environments almost every day. For every daring and outlandish new idea that is proposed by one hopeful soul, there will be a long list of skeptical colleagues who are willing to offer 20 reasons why the idea might fail or cause harm. This sabotages innovation and progress.
So, how does this play out exactly?
We seem to have a biological urge to save people from themselves – this may take the form of overtly belittling the person with the idea, tearing the proposal to shreds, refusing to examine or consider the suggestion seriously or creating an environment where it is unsafe to brainstorm or take risks. Instead of fostering initiative and exploring options, the focus is immediately shifted to put up protective roadblocks and creative stop signs (i.e. sabotage).
Does any of this sound familiar?
Either the voice in your own head that says “you cannot do it” or the guy who sits two cubicles away and has a knack for tearing everyone else’s ideas to shreds… yet he can never seem to come up with an innovative or original solution of his own. In our vigour to ensure that new ideas are properly vetted and scrutinized, our ancient and hard-wired brain response to scan for danger and protect ourselves, is effectively killing innovation. This automatic reaction needs to be identified and consciously overridden in order to ensure that we (as individuals and organizations) start generating novel and constructive solutions to problems.
3 Tips to Avoid Sabotage and Foster Innovation
1.Eliminate “But” – Instead of searching for looking for defects or pointing out why something won’t work, focus on how you can add to the discussion or process. When you (or someone else) conceives of a concept or strategy, resist the urge to say “yes, but that will never work because”. By substituting the word “and”, it will allow you to constructively add to or expand upon the idea rather that stopping the creative process dead in its tracks. This slight change in words and focus will exponentially impact creativity and reduce sabotage.
2.Don’t mix right and left – Creativity and innovation are often associated with predominately “right” brain thinking. While critiquing and evaluation are often considered the domain of the “left” brain. It is difficult (particularly in a group dynamic) to generate momentum around creativity and imagination while simultaneously attempting to evaluate and examine each idea. Even the most adept and flexible brain will struggle to shift gears back and forth. In order to create the best environment for each and get the best results, it is preferable to schedule a separate time for brainstorming and appraisal.
3.Put away your club, caveman – It takes approximately one second, from the time you physically react to something in your environment that generates a strong emotion, to when your conscious mind kicks in and you start to think things through. When generating new ideas and searching for innovative solutions, resist the urge to club suggestions to death. Take a deep breath and think things through before commenting verbally. Consider using a trained facilitator for group sessions – this will keep everyone accountable and provide an objective perspective if the atmosphere becomes in conducive to advancement.
I once heard a senior manager chastise someone in front of 14 colleagues for suggesting an idea that seemed [to him] preposterous and impractical. You could have heard a pin drop in that room and it pretty much shut down the communication for the rest of the meeting. Nothing got solved and everyone left deflated. In one foul blow that manager essentially killed any hope of brainstorming a viable solution. At the end of the day, every problem has a solution. The key is to harness and re-direct the infinite potential within your own mind (and the collective mind of the team) to find the inspiration that will produce the desired result.
17 Aug 2011
Do You Sometimes Make The EASY Way Look Hard?
What if I told you that YOU are you’re own worst enemy? Would you be offended or would you smile and agree, because you know it’s true. It’s true for ALL of us.
You can tell a lot about a business person by the way they spend their time. We all spend our time in various ways. Many business owners and senior executives tell me that there is not enough time in the day to get everything done. Personally, I have a belief that there is always enough time in the day to do all of the things that are WORTH doing. The key is to identify what is worth your while.
Sometimes activity can be a kind of anesthesia for the pain of not achieving the results you want and deserve. Action is always better than procrastination. However, more activity is not always better than less.
What about ‘make busy’ activities? If you’ve ever spent your day stuck in back-to-back meetings, answering routine questions from your team, responding to emails, troubleshooting, emptying the in-tray or tidying the office, you know exactly what I mean by ‘make busy’.
It is easy to spend large amounts of time on ‘make busy’ activities. In fact it is possible to spend ALL your time on these activities, creating the magnificent illusion that you are hard at work, simply because you feel flat out. You are working hard but you have very little (in financial results) to show for it. Your day is full of tasks and you get home exhausted – so you must have put in a hard day’s work, right?
Unfortunately, these habitual and ‘make busy’ activities can keep you trapped where you already are – just simply maintaining, not growing. By filling your days with these tasks, you are in effect avoiding the very activities that you know will really move your business or career forward and produce tangible results – what we might call ‘productive activities’. These activities rarely happen automatically. They require focused attention. And, all too often, they get relegated to ‘tomorrow’ or ‘sometime soon’.
A great many business owners and senior executives, while they like to think of themselves as entrepreneurial, would rather do anything other than face the thought of ”productive activities”. They probably have these things on their ‘to do’ lists, but after another day of busyness, they just say to themselves – again “It’s OK, I was really busy. The business planning review will have to wait for tomorrow.”
The problem is this – and believe me, I have seen it played out many, many times: if you are waiting for the right or best time to do these critical ‘productive activities’, that time will simply never come. Tomorrow there will be more ‘busy work’ to do, and your unproductive habits will fill the rest of the day, and the cycle will start all over again.
Today is a new day – the past is over and has no relevance to today or your future. Successful people are not without problems or challenges. Successful people simply refuse to carry the SAME dilemmas or hurdles for months (or years) on end. They seek solutions, face impediments, overcome obstacles and move on. They make time to focus on ‘productive activities’. They rise above the ‘noise’ of busyness, create ways to focus their mind on the things that really matter right now, and get on with the job. They set specific goals and they monitor and take action based on the financial trends in their business. They don’t try to do ‘everything’, they focus only on the very things that will give them the most leveraged and positive result. They rarely blame external circumstances when things go wrong and they take responsibility every day for what they choose to spend their time on.
Success is achieved with less not more – and it’s actually easier than you think. Working like a dog to avoid dealing with problems and keeping yourself immersed in ‘busy work’ – now THAT IS HARD WORK! Why would you choose to do THAT when you could simply take a step back and choose to do the 1-2 things that you know would move your business forward right now?
Isn’t it time to start taking it easy? It worked for The Eagles in the ’70s and it can work for you in your business (or career) right now!
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4936506
That’s The Good News, Now Do You Want To Hear The Bad News?
If you do a quick search on the internet, you will uncover hundreds of experts, coaches, accountants, journalists and government organizations that quote the statistic “8 out of 10 business fail in the first year”. However, the fact that the statistic is widely touted doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s true or backed up by empirical evidence.
So what is the truth? I searched the internet and couldn’t find confirmation of any study that was done to back-up this statistic (that 8 out of 10 businesses fail) by a reputable or well-known bureau. What I did in fact find was some evidence to the contrary. According to credit reference checking agency Veda Advantage, only a small percentage of new businesses close in their first 12-months of business.
What is the exact amount, you ask? Would you believe, less than two percent?
However, they assert another 32 percent close their doors between their second and fifth year of operations, while 21 percent wind up between the sixth and ninth.
So, that is the good news. However, as you can probably guess, it’s not ALL good news.
Just because a start-up doesn’t go under in the first 12 months, doesn’t mean that the owner is running a successful enterprise. I wonder if anyone has bothered to measure how many of the businesses who survived:
- Paid the owner a wage that was at least equivalent to what he/she could have earned elsewhere as an employee?
- Generated a profit and positive cash flow? and
- Had enough working capital to service their debt, pay taxes and suppliers etc. as they came due?
The first few years of business are incredibly risky. In working with hundreds of business owners, we have found that the large majority opt to forgo their salary or inject more equity to prevent them from going under prematurely. What this means is that, while they may not have “technically” gone under, these fledgling enterprises are far from commercially viable and successful.
Statistics can be both helpful and misleading at the same time. It is easy to assert figures but more difficult to substantiate their veracity or explain the implications thereof.
The author of an article or press release will often use statistics to capture your attention and motivate action. That’s why people use statistics – numbers are persuasive and have an aura of authority. A statistic like – 8 out of 10 businesses fail – gets attention, doesn’t it? Whether this data is accurate or not, is only half the story. As a business owner or manager, we must look deeper to find the insights that we can take away and use to improve our results.
Personally, I don’t care what percentage goes under. No matter how long you’ve been operating, if you’re not getting paid a salary, producing profit and generating positive cash flow, you’re not running a successful company. Closing your doors is only half the story. The doors may very well be wide open, but technically, no one is there.
Discipline and attention to details is more important than ever if you want to succeed in challenging economic times. Take a look around… competitors are closing their doors – which means more potential customers for the businesses that DO survive. And in times like these, it’s going to take more than “thinking outside the box” and goodwill with existing customers to secure the survival of your business.
You may have been lucky over the past few years – you may have found it possible to operate without a detailed, written plan and systems/processes. But the global economic crisis has changed all of that. If you want to thrive, there is only one thing that is for sure – uncertain times call for deliberate decisions and proven practices.
So here are & top tactics to recession-proof your business.
Read More
Life isn’t always easy – there can be no question about that. It’s unpredictable and it’s often hard to make sense of what happens. Some of the events in our journey end up being nothing more than minor irritants, while others are more like being hit by a Mack truck at 200 kph.
Regardless – we have to play the hand we are dealt.
Part of the process of coming to terms with whatever occurs in your life is to find a way to make sense of it. If science indicates that objective reality doesn’t actually exist, it is very much up to us to create a reality that helps us move on and find some meaning. As W Mitchell so accurately points out, ‘It’s not what happens to you, it’s what you do about it that matters’.
I like to think of it as choosing to ‘make chicken soup out of chicken shit’. And it is often in these times of desperation or perspiration that we accomplish our greatest achievements. We play the hand that we have been dealt and in so doing we stretch beyond the finite boundaries of probability and skill into the realm of possibility and inspiration.
For Christopher Reeve a random riding accident changed his life. Everything he was in terms of his career and how people perceived him vanished the instant he hit the ground. And yet he was able to muster his resources and master his own mind so as to find a reason to carry on. I’m sure becoming paralysed was not part of his life plan. I’m sure there must have been times that he was angry and bitter, but these feelings obviously didn’t consume him.
The simple truth is that Christopher Reeves found himself in a wheelchair at just 43 years old. Nothing could be done to change that. There was no way to wind back the clock and no way to repair the damage. His condition was permanent. But his state of mind and any negative emotions he felt were temporary and 100% within his control. He had two options: (1) let the event consume his life and extinguish his spirit or (2) accept his condition and make the best use of his time and influence to advance science in the hope that someday others with spinal cord injuries might walk again. In many ways, he became more of a superhero after his accident than he had previously been in his film roles because he created a vision and a purpose that was bigger than the event that changed his life.
He accepted the cards he was dealt in the game of life and he played with the courage, determination and strength of character of a superhero. Perhaps Christopher himself said it best, ‘I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. They are the real heroes, and so are the families and friends who have stood by them.’
Perhaps today, January 5th, 2011…….yes TODAY – is the perfect time for us to all stand back and celebrate the superhero within ourselves and others. If we choose to play the hand we have been dealt to the best of our ability…I think we will all look back [someday] and agree that the “game” was worthwhile.