Leadership Sparks

What?  Have I not been listening?  Have I not heard the news experts describing the current times as the worst since the Great Depression, the loud cry of businesses watching in dismay as their revenues and investments decline, the very loud pop of the latest economic bubble, and real people losing their homes to mortgages they can no longer afford?  Doesn’t this author realize that many of us are facing real difficulty these days?

Yes, I have been listening.  I have heard and have personally experienced my own share of it.  And I also hear something else – something much quieter and, I think, so very important.  I hear some people wondering…

I hear people starting to ask important questions of themselves and about the future success of their businesses.  “How can my business survive this economic downturn?”   “What do I need to do to earn more money?”  “How can we possibly do more when we don’t have enough time or money as it is?”

So, what do we do in times like these?  Most will pull back and focus their changes only on what they shouldn’t do – spend the money they already have.  The changes they implement concentrate on controlling their expenses until times of prosperity return.  I think times like these are a huge opportunity for advancing the overall success of your company by focusing on a question:  How can you serve your customers’ emerging new needs better than anyone else?

With the pie of prosperity shrinking, what can you change within yourself and your business to make your customers want to give you a larger share of the pie than your competitors?   If most of your competitors will be focusing only on controlling their expenses now is one of the easiest times to differentiate yourself and gain market share.

Take a client of mine as an example.  He owns a flower shop.  As times get tough people will naturally tend not to spend as much in this shop.  But, he would still like his revenue to go up.  So, what does he do?  By noticing that he is really not so much in the flower business as in a business that symbolizes the beauty and romance of relationships, he is able to see many opportunities to serve his customers – even when the couple has less money to spend.   By creating a strong brand around being the expert resource for special relationships, he can get into other services such as cards, jewelry, romantic travel destinations, wedding services, etc.  He doesn’t have to do this all himself, he can partner with other people who offer these services and still become known as the “relationship place.”  By doing that, he is differentiating himself by becoming a more valuable resource to his customers.  Later on, his current competitors will likely still be flower shops.   Where would you rather go when you want something special for your loved one, but money is tight – a flower shop, or someplace that can help you add the most value to your special relationship with the money you have?

So, do you know what your customers really need right now?  Is it different than it used to be?  Can you shift and fully satisfy those needs faster than your competitors can respond?  Can you bring even more value to your customer so they will want to give you what little money they do have?  The companies who say they just don’t have the money to do anything new or to change,  well…  perhaps now is the time to leave them behind.

Are you satisfied with the results you are achieving in your business right now?  If you are like most of the people I have talked to over the years, you might sense that there might be something that could be improved.  For some people it could be more sales, more money.  For others it might be less stress, a comfortable retirement, or a dream they haven’t yet realized.

However, most people and organizations are surprised when they find out they have to choose to behave differently in order to achieve different results.  Einstein once gave a definition of the word Insanity as Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  And yet when I have been working with businesses who are looking to increase their sales I often run into the attitude of “But this is the way we have always done it, why should we have to change?”

It may sound a little silly when presented in this way, but as human beings we love to and need to get into habits.  Habits are the mind’s way of remembering successful strategies for doing the things we do every day so our brains don’t have to think about every little detail.  Haven’t we all had the experience of arriving at work in the morning and wondering how we got there?  The problem arises when our circumstances outgrow our habits.  We keep on comfortably doing the same thing we have always done.  If we want more results, we just do more of the same thing.  This is what leads to the stress that is so common in our workplace today.  We are all doing a lot more of the same thing and getting frustrated that our increased efforts aren’t producing better results.

So why don’t we change our behavior when we notice we aren’t producing the results we want?  It’s because habits are mostly unconscious.  Especially within an established culture, we really aren’t aware we have a choice to do something different.  If someone ends up having the courage to try something different, the culture often rewards that brave soul with a reprimand saying something like, “That isn’t the way things are done around here.” 

So producing better results isn’t a very easy thing to do after all.  It requires looking at and noticing what you and those around you are unconsciously doing and having the courage to question and consciously choose a different behavior - usually before you really know whether a new behavior will create better results or even worse results.  This unknown adds more resistance to our ability to change, at least we know the results we currently have!  Anything different can appear scary.

So, finding ways of getting better results requires two things to be effective:

1. Working with someone outside your organization that can act as an effective mirror to reflect and highlight what you are doing unconsciously.  This role requires training and practice and has a name - a Professional Business Coach.
   
2. Measuring the results you desire so you can dynamically learn over time whether the new behaviors you are trying are getting you closer to your goals or further away.

By working together with a professional business coach to become more aware of your outmoded behaviors, trying new ones, and measuring the results, you and your organization can learn together how to achieve the results you dream of.

Talking about leadership seems to be popular right now.  Sometimes the bookstores and the web sometimes seem to me like an ancient bazaar with eager consultants and authors hawking their latest book on leadership, what it looks like, and what you need to do to become a leader.   At times, I have found myself a little annoyed at all these excited and differing views on leadership being peddled so eagerly by so many merchants.  Perhaps it has something to do with a perception that somehow they are unintentionally implying that I am less than a leader right now.

Last Sunday I saw on the news a short video of a young man in a wheelchair doing a back flip for the first time ever.  There are several videos on YouTube if you missed it.  You can see the success video at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc1YdL_w1Hg.  There are others showing more of how he got there.

Here was a young man who was just doing something he loved.  He had seen others practicing tricks on skateboards and wanted to do the same - the only problem was he was in a wheelchair because he was born with a defect in his spine.  But he didn’t see himself as being prevented by his circumstances, he just thought he was a kid with different kind of wheels to deal with.

It occurred to me then that this kid was showing a very pure kind of leadership.  He didn’t need a book.  He wasn’t even trying to be a leader.  He was just doing something he loved with a view of himself as being capable of doing it even though he had a wheelchair.  The magical part of the story was when other kids in wheelchairs saw him do the back flip .  One mother cried tears of joy as she shared how her son was so moved by watching that he wanted to go out and try to do it too.

This is what I see as an essential view of leadership.  To find what you want to do regardless of what wheelchair you might be strapped and see yourself as capable.  Not to do it for the pleasure of others, but for the pleasure of your soul.  To take on the challenge and all of the falls and scrapes that it takes to accomplish the feat without hiding from view from those who might be present.  After all, it doesn’t really matter whether or if anyone is there to see success or failure.  It seems to me that it is the attitude of seeing yourself as capable of being fully human regardless of wheelchairs that inspires others to do the same. 

So what is your wheelchair?  Not enough time to do what you really would love to do personally or in your business?  Not enough money?  I have heard from so many people, “I can’t do what I would really love to do because…,” you fill in the blank.  After watching this kid on the news last Sunday they all seem like excuses not to try, because these people are somehow are viewing themselves as disabled because of their circumstances. 

Well, we all have our own version of that wheelchair we are strapped to.   After seeing this kid, I want to go out and start popping wheelies in mine.  Want to have some fun and join me?  I have just one request - that we just keep laughing as we all get bruised and scraped and have the time of our lives.  Who knows or cares if we will ever be able to do a back flip?  I would just like to experience the act of trying - no matter what it takes.  This is what leadership means to me.