to go in a new direction, you have to follow the same advice: “Commit yourself to the turn.”
Skiing is all about turns. As a beginner, you make big turns across the entire width of the ski run. If you’re like me—a little cautious and timid in a new sport—you go slowly as you make these turns. As a result, there’s a moment in each turn in which you realize you’re facing straight downhill. That’s when you get scared.
Now here’s the interesting part: if you stay committed—if you don’t let fear get the best of you—your body moves you around, safely completing the turn. If you waver, thinking, “Oh my gosh, I don’t want to go straight down,” then you stop turning and actually end up facing downhill—what you wanted to avoid.
Business, too, is all about making turns. When you start a company, you have an idea of where you want to go, but you can quickly find you have to change your plan—sometimes slightly, sometimes a great deal. As you continue in business, you discover there are times that call for you to make dramatic turns: perhaps new competition enters the market, your profit margins erode, or new technologies create vast differences in how you conduct business. You have to go in a new direction.
You may be a little timid as you set off on a new course, or you may rush quickly into it. Whatever your confidence level at the beginning, as you get into your turn—as you start to face and deal with the consequences of the choices you’ve made—that’s when you get scared.
And that’s when you have to commit yourself to the turn. When you are developing a new direction for your company—a new project, expansion, new technologies—you have to follow through with enough support, resources, and especially time, to give it a reasonable chance of success.
If you are working with others, especially employees, it’s particularly important that you stay committed. Employees take their lead from you, the leader. If you waver in your resolution to your new project, employees will feel uncertain about their future and will hesitate to make the necessary changes and sacrifices to help ensure success. You have to believe. You have to stay the course.
That doesn’t mean you can’t examine and readjust the details of the choices you’ve made. You can and should. But be careful: I’ve seen many companies that either pull the plug on a project too soon, or, more often, commit only half-heartedly to new undertakings. Both approaches lead to failure: Ending a project too soon means you haven’t given it enough time to prove whether it can succeed; half-hearted commitments inevitably lead to failure.
When you don’t commit yourself to the turn, you’re going to end up facing straight downhill.
As you make a change in your business life, indeed in any part of your life, follow through sufficiently to give it a chance to succeed. Give your new direction enough energy and commitment to create the momentum to carry you through the inevitable rough spots. Commit yourself to the turn.
Guidelines for Goals
Tips for a productive goal-setting process:
Reward yourself when you accomplish your goals. Rewards keep you motivated to set and reach other goals, and as an entrepreneur, there’s usually no one else to acknowledge your achievements but you. So if you land a big sale or make all your calls for the month, give yourself a reward.
Seizing Opportunities
When it comes to figuring out how to succeed, many business owners remind me of the man in this joke…
A flood threatens a town, forcing everyone to evacuate. But Joe thinks, “I’m a devout man; God will save me” and stays put. As the waters start rising, Joe’s neighbor comes by: “Joe, come with me; we’ve got to go.” But Joe declines, “I’m a devout man; God will save me.”
The waters keep rising. Joe scrambles to his second floor. A firefighter in a rowboat floats by Joe’s window. “Get in the boat or you’ll drown,” the firefighter says. Joe again declines, “I’m a devout man; God will save me.”
Finally, the flood waters are so high that Joe is forced up on his roof. A police helicopter comes by and throws down a rope. “It’s your last chance, climb up or you’ll drown,” the policeman yells. “No, I’m a devout man; God will save me.”
Soon Joe drowns. He arrives in Heaven and challenges God, “I’m a devout man; why didn’t you help me?”
“What do you mean?” God replies. “I did help; I sent a neighbor, a firefighter, and a helicopter.”
Many of us are like Joe—we wait for something to rescue us while missing opportunities to help ourselves. Whether in our business or personal lives, we hope for a lifeline—a new customer, rave reviews of our product, or a great relationship—to just show up.
Alas, life isn’t like that. While we wait for success to fall in our laps, real life keeps trudging along. But like Joe, if we want things to be different, we must learn to recognize opportunities and seize them; we have to do something.
We keep waiting for something to rescue us while missing opportunities to help ourselves.
Let’s face it: if you want your business or your life to change, you have to be an active participant in your own transformation.
But where do you start? How do you learn to recognize an opportunity when it’s being thrown your way?
Make a plan. Form a vision of what you
