Is it Just Wrong or an Opportunity Waiting to Happen?

I was chatting with a client recently about how hard it is sometimes to recover and move forward after something has gone wrong. Getting over the sensation of having been ‘wronged’ or of being the party who’s committed the ‘wrongful act’ is a process all by itself that, in business, can slow progress to a screeching halt while everyone tries to avoid the pointing fingers. My client said something powerful: ‘people would rather admit things are imperfect than admit to being wrong’. In business, however, the political nature of participants who are competing for attention, recognition or limited pats on the back is often to either assign or avoid blame. The result of either of these efforts is to ignore the more important focus which is the one from which all could gain: what didn’t work, how can it be avoided going forward, and what can we learn as a result?

In the meantime, real resolution to the problem is still waiting; slowed or avoided because no one wants to admit to being wrong. If you, the motivator-in-chief, can recognize that in imperfection is the opportunity to improve, there may be a key to moving things along, avoid the need to accuse and speed improvements. Not so easy to do yet it sure beats the alternative poisoned environment. While you’re wondering if this is how things are done at your place of business, consider these questions:

1. Is your business environment one in which people are rewarded for an innovative attempt or only some recognizable success after the attempt? While the latter may have some immediate, quantifiable whooppee impact, the former will net you an employee who’ll keep trying to make things better for you and your business.

2. Is assigning blame for what went wrong more powerful than seeking process improvements? The former may puff up an ego while the latter may continue to build a business (and may puff multiple egos, if that’s meaningful for you.)

3. Do your employees compete with each other instead of other companies in your category of provider? While this might be useful in a strictly sales environment, in every other way it diminishes the greater growth and productivity that can come from shared resources and support.

4. Do you have a file of mis-steps taken by employees that you’ll dust off during the ’someday-in-the-future’ annual review? If you’d like to learn just how much you might be missing on the power of well-designed performance reviews, just shoot me an email with ‘performance’ in the subject line.

I wonder which of these environmental norms will lead beyond ‘imperfect and getting better’ and which will keep you in the ‘wronged’ sensibility?

Got the World on a String or Its Weight on Your Shoulders?

Small business owners are often faced with challenges of priority that can tie a knot no stomach should ever experience. They believe they’re completely responsible to their business when in fact the reverse is true: their business owes them everything. They believe their most important role is in perfecting their product when, in fact, their true product, their enterprise, often begs for attention. They believe that unless they’re engaged in ‘doing’ they’re not truly working. And yet, if they’re not engaged in ‘thinking’, ‘dreaming’ and ‘envisioning’ they’re ignoring their most important task: planning the development and health of their business. They believe they need to attend to daily tasks when, in fact, they must attend to all the tomorrows of their enterprise. They think it’ll take less time to just ‘do it myself’ rather than train an employee. In fact, by ‘doing it myself’ they’re prevented from doing the work only they can do while handling tasks a $10/hour employee could do. They go into business to have more time and freedom and then become slaves to a needy master: their business.

Is the way it’s supposed to be?

Not in my play book. Owning a business is a vehicle, one of many, to help achieve the bigger vision for your life. Yet somehow, that vision can become subverted along the way and the owner – maybe you – loses the many sources of joy and accomplishment that could be derived from all the other elements of your life. Instead of enjoying the rewards of business ownership, life becomes a brief escape from enslavement to the enterprise to which you now feel wholly responsible. Can this change? Yes!

Here’s how:

Step 1: recognize that your life is far bigger, richer, varied and flexible than your business.

Step 2: learn how to shape the business to be consistent with and responsive to the bigger priorities, values and goals you have for the rest of your life.

Want a major wake-up call to see how far from your life priorities your business has taken you? Just shoot me an email – andrea@coachinginsight.com – with “how far off track am I” and I’ll send you a tool to let you figure it out and decide what you’ll do about it.