There’s two guys. Each is standing on a box and holding one end of the same rope. The rope is ten feet off the ground. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get over the rope.

How do you do it? (You cannot tickle them to get them to lower the rope.)

Well, you could get a big step ladder, climb up and jump over. Or you could use a trampoline. Or, if you have the technique, you could pole vault. Or Fosbury Flop yourself over the rope.

Each of these approaches has their pros and cons. They will have their own relative success rates. Some need equipment – a trampoline, a pole. Some do not. But the point is they all work.

So far so good.

Now, the rope is one hundred feet in the air.  Don’t ask me how the guys did this, but they did.

How do you get over it? Trampoline? Step ladder? No. You need a new approach. Maybe a helicopter; or you could build a staircase; or fire yourself out of a cannon; or use a jet pack.

The point is the approaches that get you over the ten foot high rope don’t work with the one hundred foot high rope. They may work with a fifteen foot high rope, or maybe even a twenty foot high rope, but there will come a time when they are not up to the job. The current processes, technologies and approaches only get you so far. To hit the heights – the one hundred foot high rope –  you need new means.

It’s the same in business. Whatever it is you do now…your marketing; your strategising; your productivity; your product and service development; how you deliver your value; your logistics; your systems and processes; everything that makes up your business, or department:  each is either -

a) Inadequate

It can hardly get you over a one foot rope, never mind a ten foot rope. Your trampoline has lost its spring. Your Fosbury is more of a Fop than a Flop. Or,

b) Adequate

Adequate for your needs. Not over-engineered, or creaking at the seams. Sufficient. It does the job. It is reliable. Fit for purpose. Or,

c) Over-engineered.

It can get you over the one hundred foot rope. Even although you can see only the ten foot rope. This may be a good thing as you are prepared for the future. Or it may just be a cost, because helicopters are more expensive than trampolines.

You will probably have a mix of a, b and c in your business/organisation.

Here are some critical questions –

Q1 What do you do today to generate sales?

Q2 Can these activities generate a five-fold increase in sales?

Q3 If not, what changes do you have to make to these activities, or what new activities do you have to adopt to generate a five-fold increase in sales?

Q4 If you imagine increasing your sales five-fold over the next 2 to 5 years, what supporting systems and processes in your business will become inadequate and in what order?

Q5 How will you deal with the answer to Q4?

If you take the time to answer these five questions thoughtfully you will end up with the bones of a good growth strategy. You will be getting ready for the one hundred foot rope.

…is the subject of this week’s Pearl of Leadership Wisdom

It ain’t what they call you; it’s what you answer to. – W.C. Fields
It’s been only a few short months since I wrote of Self-Confidence and I’m being asked about it again. Despite us living here in one of the richest countries on earth, with 90% of the world’s population willing to swap places with us at the drop of a hat, this remains a huge issue.
My soufflé won’t rise…
Self-confidence cannot simply be summoned up by your neck-top computer.  Positive thinking only gets you so far. You are unlikely to become the world’s best soufflé chef by thinking about it.
We are all in sales…
You are unlikely to be a confident, self-assured small business person if the only thing you’re good at is your product, what you deliver. Not if you have other responsibilities, like sales and sales and sales.
And did I mention sales.
The Great Barrier Grief…
Without doubt there are blockers to self-confidence –

* All dependencies – whether people, drugs, habits, beliefs (I wish independence for the Scots. Not because I have the idiotic hate-the-English mindset, which I don’t. It’s because being independent will force Scotland to be…well… independent. And shed the little-brother mindset. Then, and only then, can we contemplate self-confidence.)
* All comparisons – of yourself with others (the only comparison worth giving brain-time to is where you are compared to where you want to be).
* Don’t repress your desires, they will never go away. The act of repression implies that you feel the desire is bad and you have it so you are bad etc etc you know the thing – no self-confidence there.

Would the real barrier please stand up…
But the real blocker is poor competence or skill. Self-confidence is an output. It’s not an input. You become self-confident when you purposely set out to become skilled and capable at a task. In time, when you hone your skills, it will come. Sporadic bouts of activity, driven largely out of fear and desperation, like the sales guy who hates making calls then makes 100 in a day, and then none for the next two weeks – this compounds and ingrains poor self-confidence. Vicious cycle.
You don’t start with…
…self-confidence. You end with self-confidence.
Of course once competent your self-confidence will increase and this will spill over to become part of your demeanour and will make the attainment of self-confidence in other areas of your life easier. Virtuous cycle.
So what to do…
Think of the one area where supreme self-confidence would change your life. I mean really change it. Be specific.
Plan to do this thing – put it in your diary. Make a promise to yourself. Now plan for this event. Once you’ve done it, review how it went. Seek feedback. Now plan again for the next time. Then do it. Then review.
Plan-Do-Review-Plan-Do-Review….they call it continuous improvement.
Take your medicine…
I cannot stress enough that the one great medicine, the cure-all, that almost always works in almost all situations, that makes you feel better mentally and physically, that generates what those that don’t take the medicine call “luck”…is…ACTION.
Just do it. Self-confidence is an output. It will come.

Mark

This week’s Pearl of Leadership Wisdom is on…….

Goal Setting

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”

- Michelangelo

Our success is measured by the extent to which we reach our goals.

It’s easy to write a goal, but effective goal setting is a wee bit more involved.

Does our goal tell us what to do tomorrow? If it doesn’t we may never get started. So we need to develop smaller, sub-goals, e.g. 90 day goals.

Do we fully understand what’s in it for us – all the benefits gained and losses avoided by achievement of our goal? This drives our motivation. Write them all down, by hand.

Have we considered the barriers that may block us? Working out how to overcome them beforehand makes us much more psychologically robust when barriers appear.

Have we considered the critical actions we need to do to achieve our goal and make sure that every day we do enough of them and do them first?

We must track our progress using a measure.

Developing an affirmation is beneficial: a positive statement in the present tense that we can believe, for example, “I am a winner!” We say this to ourselves every morning. We feel stupid at first, but it passes.

Visualisation – last Tuesday night on the radio I heard the footballer Wayne Rooney say “the day before a match I ask the kit man what strip we’ll be wearing. Then I imagine scoring a goal wearing that strip, over and over, in my head”. That’s visualisation.

This is effective goal setting. And success is goal-directed action. So let’s give ourselves the best chance of success. Aim high!

Get a Goal Planning Sheet by emailing me: mark@weareppp.com

Next week…..High Payoff Activies

Achieving goals is all about identifying our High Payoff Activities – and doing them – all of them. Regardless of our comfort zone.