If you are not getting better, then you must be getting worse. In this age of instant information and transformation, speed is the new weapon of choice for top performers. To survive and thrive today, you must be willing to learn, change and implement faster than your competition. In this and next month’s articles, we’ll examine some ideas on how to adapt to the environment you find yourself in, and how to thrive within it.
First, you must focus on things that can move you to another level. If you do what you have been doing, you will get what you have been getting. No longer is it acceptable to just show up, do your job and go home. No longer is it acceptable to wait and see what the competitors do, or let someone else be the first to implement something. In today’s market, the first to the show wins the prize.
Daily education, keeping up with changes in your industry and trends in other industries are basic daily activities today. It’s no longer something you do “every once in a while” or “when you get around to it.” Self-education, improvement and adaptation to technology and other changes are the keys to winning.
Winners today make faster decisions than ever before and consensus decision making is dead. If you take the time for everyone to agree on what should be done, you are too late to the party and your competition is already ahead of you. The winners today are visionary leaders who leave their ego at the door and are willing to be humble learners. Learn massively every day, make decisions, make them quick, make mistakes, take the heat, self-correct and move on.
Old-school entrepreneurs who fill their day with emergency activities and bloat their ego by cramming their day with time-filling but not business-shifting activities will be crushed. Those who are disciplined in massive daily education, rapid decision making, implementation and adaption will grow exponentially over the people and businesses used to doing business the old way. The winners of today do not scare of making mistakes, but of not making decisions quick enough.
To get to another level of success, you must understand and master your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind works on autopilot. This autopilot moves you towards what is easy, fun or provides short-term gratification. The subconscious deals only in the moment. When you start work in the morning, your autopilot guides you to talk with fellow employees about things you like, to read the paper and to surf the Internet for topics you enjoy. Managers spend the day doing mundane clerical chores. In other words, you are simply hanging out. The day is filled with filler. You are essentially wasting time and majoring in the minor.
I once made a post to Facebook about keeping a daily journal of what you do with your time for one week. I suggested that a good way to start is to review each hour of the day for a week and write down what you did for that hour. I received a comment from a dealer stating sarcastically they had wasted time just reading and thinking about what I had wrote. This same dealer is one who lost their franchise for a lack of sales and non-performance. Is that a coincidence? I don’t think so. For you to move forward, you must unlearn your habits of the past.
It’s not natural for you to do in-depth planning, detailed work, long range work, be vigilant of your actions in your time and make big, tough decisions quickly. What is natural is for your subconscious to put you on autopilot. Unfortunately, your subconscious without the right program is a huge waste of your very own supercomputer — your mind.
Fortunately, your subconscious is also a goal-seeking monster. You give your subconscious a goal and it will work diligently towards that goal. Give your mind a goal, followed by habitual actions of concentrated effort. The wonderful part of this is that once you start your concentrated effort and create habitual actions towards your goal, your subconscious gets addicted and wants more. Boom! You have reprogrammed your computer.
Decide what you want, why you want it and create habitual actions that move you towards that goal. Release any anxiety about the eventual attainment in that goal and be fulfilled with your actions and forward momentum. You can always adjust your actions if need be.
In Part 2, we’ll look at some other methods of allowing yourself to get a jump on the competition and get you to where you want, and need to be.