Advice: Why don’t we push the envelope?

A tricky question this time around – why, with the best of intentions, do we stick with what we know, rather than trying to expand the horizons of our business?

I’m not pointing any fingers (and I’m certainly not immune to it myself!), but increasingly, I come into contact with businesses and business people who have, well, stopped.

There’s nothing wrong with a quick recharge of the batteries, or doing a little bit of navel gazing before ploughing onwards and upwards… But if you’re not exactly firing on all cylinders, how to you get back into gear again?

Here’s a few reasons why we stop pushing the envelope, with some common-sense antidotes.

Tiredness

When it’s just you in your business, you’re inexorably linked to the success or failure of your venture. So much so, that one mentor of mine likes to assess the concerns of a business by only assessing the character of the businessperson – he knows that the business follows directly in step.

So if you’re at the end of your rope, there’s simply no way to push any envelopes at all. Things have to change – if you can’t cope, neither can your livelihood.

Find something to change your lifestyle, to change your outlook, or at the very least – to change your sleeping habits! Begin with the obvious: your health has to be a priority, but next most important comes some ‘me time’ – a regular mental health break – book out one evening per week solely for your own hobbies or interests.

It’s incredibly common-sense stuff, but in the battle between important and urgent, it’s the important things these that give way to the constant daily seemingly-urgent things.

Sticking to the Status Quo

“Everybody else is doing it/no-one else is doing it. Don’t see why I need to anything different.” Ah-ha – an easy one to dispel. When the global financial crisis hit in early 2009, a lot of companies were put under the pump. With the ‘expected’ crisis, businesses were faced with a choice to either hide under a rock and weather it out, or alternatively to use the uncertainty to trial new products and services.

History tells us that the crisis wasn’t as huge as it could have been, and so those businesses who ‘zigged’ when the others ‘zagged’ had an 18 month window of opportunity when wages froze and interest rates were down – and when the tide turned, they were the first ones to ride it.

If no-one else is doing it, you have to ask the question: do they all know something I don’t, or are they all just sticking to only what they know, too?

Internal/External Friction

If internal forces inside your business are causing you to hold back your grand plans, then maybe it’s time for either some serious education OR a rethink of your organisational chart. Your staff and your customers are the two major obstacles in moving your business anywhere: even if your staff love you, they still value job security as their No.1 priority; and while your customers do pay the bills, they also shape your future.

Henry Ford (Mr Model T himself) once famously said “If I had have asked my customers what they wanted, they would just have said ‘faster horses’”.

The best way to overcome friction is with education. For your staff, they need to come on ‘this journey’ with you, so enlighten them – train them – and they’ll see the same rationale you have for pushing your envelope. The same goes for your customers, too. Sometimes you need to educate them in these new products, new opportunities before you can sell it them.

Lack of knowledge

Ouch. A common reason, but also not a great reason. Refer to the above Henry Ford quote once more. You just don’t know what you don’t know. Former US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld went a step further and declared that: “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know.”

OK. So half the world laughed at him for making such a confusing mess of a statement, but, actually, we was totally on the ball.

TL/DR: In this day and age, don’t be caught short with a lack of knowledge.

Solutions? The internet is a vast resource of people trying to help you learn new concepts (case in point: what you’re reading right now!); there are blogs on every topic known to mankind; wikipedia.org has just enough truthiness to be considered factual on over 3.2 million topics; there are more ‘for dummies’ books in your local bookstore or library than ever before; and there are even people in your own suburb who would welcome an opportunity to give you a ‘brain-dump’ for the price of a large flat white with two sugars. Seriously, it’s not hard *to* learn – it’s hard to *realise* that you need to learn.

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Me? I’m happy because I finally put my Donald Rumsfeld quote to good use. Now, stop reading and go out and do something awesome. Go. Now.

AB out