This Week's Insight...

Being a Superhero

Procrastination is the thief of time.   Never do today what you can put off ‘til tomorrow!   Analysis paralysis.   The “normal” state of mind.

In our daily lives, we become consumed by the rush and frenzy of the next meeting, the next report, being late to pick up the kids, having too many things to do.   So we end up on auto-pilot, thinking that we’re doing the best we can.   Auto-pilots crash planes – it has happened more than once.   Auto-pilots react to what are taken to be the normal cut and thrust of flying a plane or everyday life.

You need to act – be Action Man (or Action Woman) – or, perhaps, in this day and age, you need to be Action Person (although it doesn’t quite have the same urgency to it!).

You may have already my article “Strategies for Effortless Business Success” – with the emphasis on the word effortless.    In this follow up article, I want to explore what I mean by success – because most “normal” people really haven’t got the first clue what the word actually means in the context of their everyday lives.      

Bear in mind, of course, that normal people are technically insane – their subconscious mind controls them – not the other way around.  

Many people, when they first hear me say this, laugh at the notion – but, I can assure you, that it is no laughing matter, for it is the normal perspective on success that has brought the global banking system to the very brink of self-destruction.   It is the normal definitions of success that has brought the auto industry to its knees, left ordinary people with unserviceable debt and made life so incredibly difficult for so many business people.   So, before we go any further, let’s understand that normal definitions of success simply won’t do.

A couple of years back, I asked a large gathering at a Chamber of Commerce business breakfast, if they thought that making abnormal financial gains and achieving abnormal business growth would be a good definition of success.   Considering many people to have achieved that level of “success”, many of the participants made the point that that kind of “success” often comes at a high price – whether it be family life, personal life or even health, many people “gain the whole world” and “lose their own soul”.

Unfortunately, normal definitions of success are both comparative and competitive.   Businesses compare themselves to the competition.   There was a time when large accountancy practices measured their success by comparing their employee numbers against those of their competitors – to the point that one such firm employed extra gardeners to put them into first place on what was a completely mis-constructed league table.   Life assurance companies construct their version of success based on the amount of new business growth – regardless of whether their new business was profitable or not (or even sensible or not).   And banks measure their relative success on the “size of their balance sheet” – like bold boys going around shouting that “mine is bigger than yours”!

We all know where comparative and competitive definitions of success get us.   What appears to be common sense has actually turned out to be complete nonsense.  
For your business, you need to know what success means for you (just as you need to know what your version of personal success is).   Can I be so bold as to suggest a framework definition of real business success?

We excel at what we do – and we do it effortlessly.    Each customer is valued as if they were the only one (because we simply never know who will be the most important customer to us in the long run).   We get very well rewarded and make the kind of margins that others envy.   We don’t regard what we do as work – it’s both fun and it allows us plenty of “work/life” balance.   The team is more like family – there are no hidden agendas, everyone’s open – we hold back on nothing.   We’re constantly open to change and the next big opportunity.

Perhaps, you think that’s an ideal and that an ideal world simply does not exist.   You would be wrong on both counts.  

Over the years – including quite recently – I’ve worked with business teams whose outlook and ambitions closely mirror what I’ve written above.  Such businesses are few and far between – which, I suppose, means that they are abnormal!    But, if you don’t want to be normal in your personal life (because so-called “normal” people are technically insane!) why settle for normality in business?    If psychological research proves that normal business teams are dysfunctional, why settle for a normal business team?    The vast majority of businesses range from dysfunctional to mediocre – the more successful are simply a little less dysfunctional and mediocre than everyone else – why settle for that when you can achieve effortless business success?

I refer back to my first article in this series – where I gave you four simple ideas on how to create an effortlessly successful business strategy, where we talked about seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling and tasting the desired outcome.   I suggest you adopt that approach.   In doing so, the things you will experience as a result of your abnormal definition of success will need to be encapsulated in that desired outcome.

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