DEALING WITH INSANITY

I saw someone wearing a t-shirt the other day with the kind of snarky comment that I appreciate with my sense of humor. It read:

“I don’t suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.”

After a chuckle, I wanted to buy this t-shirt to give it to the owners and CEOs of companies I’ve witnessed.

• Refusal to raise prices for fear “they will lose all their customers.” They continue to lose money because it costs more than they charge to deliver.
• A visionary leader, but poor people manager, has a fearful team full of “head trash” from their dynamics. After investing in new key staff, the leader insists on “breaking them in” alone.
• A company getting pounded with bad reviews on social media for their failure to deliver quality and on-time results to their customers. They negotiate with customers to remove the bad reviews by giving them more services, free.
• An owner who wants new sales growth but is afraid to invest in different methods because “that’s not how everyone else in my industry does it.”

You get it. Doing the same thing over and over yet expect (or at least are hopeful) of different results — the very definition of insanity.

How does one break out of this cycle? The answer is to take an objective and a fresh look at the issues confronting the company, and being willing to change to make it happen.

Begin With the Leader

An organization can only grow as far as their leader will take them. Caught in a rut, it is the leader who must stop doing the same thing over and over and expecting the people around them to compensate for them. It is only human nature to want to do it this way. Change is fun when you can impose it on others with minimal effect on yourself. Change is hard if you are the one who has to change.

As the Leader, You Do Have to Change to Get Results.

I’m not speaking of the minimum amount of change it takes to create momentum in your organization. “Minimum” can only be found by trial and error, and the effect “freezes” your team. Your willingness to change needs to be complete, open and ambitious. The most reliable and fastest way to get a different result is to be open to all possibilities and liberating yourself and your team to the best way of getting there. And committing to it.

One solution to help you through this process is a CEO coach. A coach provides confidential and personal counsel to get the ideas out of your head, assist you in objectively making decisions new to you, and be a listening ear to help you sort through your thoughts. Then be your accountability partner to help you avoid distractions, work through fears, and remain on track.

Close Strong

That’s what we mean by closing strong. Engaging with the same energy and openness you did when you started the business. If that sounds like something that could benefit you, contact me here. Let’s see if I might be a good fit for you.