Either through ignorance or ac-ceptance of the status quo of their personal capabilities, many individuals fail to discover the secret to changing their performance or behaviour. This year many companies will linger on the borders of new growth and potential then fail to advance because of their restricted organisational belief. Some will hold meetings to plan increases in production and profits. Others will enrol employees on courses in the vain hope that these will deliver major skill or management capability changes. Some will benefit from these moves but most efforts, unfortunately, will be short lived.
What is needed is psychological approach to the personal development of every employee to show them how to change their thinking patterns through simple but profound personal programming of the mind. If this sounds like radical approach – it is. What it requires is mind shift in approach to planning and thinking if businesses really want to see major changes in sales performance, the development of people skills and profitability. Too little heed is given to programming mind power – despite the fact it brings amazing results.
Here are four big thoughts that can effect these changes:
Think growth
To grow the business you must want to grow, then think growth. Affirm your belief that you have the know-how to make it happen and then develop the driving need to keep things moving. Look for the fun as well as the challenge. ‘Fun mindedness’ stops negatives creeping in and undoing the new-programmed mind. It’s matter of programming the mind to believe ‘I can, I will, I shall’. Once you stop aspiring to greatness you stall the programming process and your business will stagnate too. You and your staff should be trained to programme your minds to work at their highest potential which is impossible without new personally programmed belief system.
Think kick-start
Think of new ways to kick-start your new year and make your message contagious – make your message viral. What was the last movie you saw? Where did you source the information about it? The newspaper? preview? Or was it friend who had seen it first and told you about it? Usually it is the latter. This is called grapevine advertising. Your friend saw the movie and couldn’t wait to tell someone. Perhaps it wasn’t movie your friend saw but product X and so on. The ‘have you heard about… ?’ virus is the most powerful business tool on the market. Traditional advertising is no longer the influential mogul it was. Get infected with viral marketing invariably delivered by injections of e-commerce and the internet. Re-programme your thinking about marketing your products or services. Develop your own marketing virus and let it spread by attaching the message to human host. It will spread to the customer at the speed of sound.
Think delegate
Another way to grow your business is to re-programme the neurone in your brain that says “you’re the boss”. Do this and you will experience great personal growth. Now is the time to take stock. What are your personal strengths? Maybe it’s in sales direction. If so, maybe that’s the area in which you should spend more time and hire or promote from within someone else to act as general manager or CEO. Build trust among your people, new or existing, to execute the new role. They must be able to trust you to give them free rein and to know that you will allow them to make mistakes without fear of reprisal.
Think problem solving
Solve problems quickly and easily. All it takes is new mindset. Stop waiting until there is problem before trying to solve it. Be vigilant in the first lane and avoid problems where possible. This requires new mindset. Einstein once said: “You cannot solve problem with the same mindset that got you into the problem in the first place.” M
Charles Donoghue APS, FNZIM is an Auckland-based author, performance psychology coach and business consultant. Email:[email protected], www.donoghuedynamics.com
