4 Ways to Shake Up Your Business Mind

The biggest threat to any business is our status quo thinking and behaviors. Highly successful professionals move beyond this mindware, shaking up their perspectives to drive breakout results.

You can too.

4 Ways to Shake up Your Mind

Every human on this planet is driven by our unconscious mindware. When we step out of the way we’ve always seen, heard, felt, thought about and done it – we step into a new level of vision, performance and results.

So how we do we get out of our programmed, automated responses and into always-conscious decision making and action? Here are 4 tools that will move your mind and shake up your thinking.

• Consciously seek a different way. We humans are innately wired to find a way that works and then repeat, repeat, repeat. Yes, we will slightly adapt the original way as we learn new things. But we are not fundamentally wired to look for the new and different (or better). We must direct our minds to move beyond our immediate unconscious responses and into consciously looking for the new and different. The best way to do this is to create a new habit – the habit of pausing and questioning.
  • First –  pause in  thoughts and actions whenever you begin to repeat that tried and true way. Simply catch yourself and stop the forward movement. For example, the next time you reach into your desk to pull out last year’s plan, data sheet, sales pipeline, customer service process or anything that can be used to repeat a pattern…. STOP. Leave it in the desk. Instead, start with a blank whiteboard or page.
  • Then – begin to ask questions.  When we  ask a question – we immediately trigger our minds to move from unconscious automation to conscious thought and analysis.  That’s when we are creative and innovative. Great questions include; Why are we doing this? What is the key goal? What new ideas can we create? What if we did this differently? What can we improve?

• Ban the “Can’t” mentality.  Have you noticed how many of our thoughts and immediate reactions define why we can’t? Talk about limiting! To be a mover and shaker –  ban the can’t word in your vocabulary and in your business. It’s a learned habit that can change. When you shift into can thinking – the results will follow. Try this:
  • One client started charging folks $1 for every time they said “can’t.” Another had folks immediately stop and pivot their thinking to come up with three alternatives for how they can do or be whatever they had previously said they can’t do or be.
  • Another created a cultural shift in her organization – away from the can’t word. She started a tote board with how many can’ts were heard in teams, then set a goal for  reducing the  can’ts over a specific timeframe. The reward for the team was a WE CAN party.  The business was rewarded with 30% growth over the next 12 months.

• Forget the Competition. Add up all the dollars you invest in competitive analysis. Add the cost of all the hours spent discussing what “they” are doing or might someday do in meetings. Then –  take 80% of that expenditure and allocate it on activities that drive innovation in your business. Seriously. It’s impossible to lead your market, to be innovative and a breakout business if you’re focused on your competition. By definition, you’re following. Instead, spend all that time and money focusing on finding new markets, new opportunities and new ways of seeing and thinking about your business. That’s how to be a profitable market leader. Besides, the view never changes if you’re following your competitor.

• Make change an integral part of your culture. Few words strike error into the minds of humans like the word “change.” That’s also the result of our mindware. Yet change is the critical key to business success. Great businesses lead their markets by changing the game, changing the way we live, work, communicate, dress and eat. Changing the way we interact with technology. To win, we must create change. That means we need to accept change as part of our business advantage. So how can you create a culture of change? Some ideas include:
  • Start a change board where folks can suggest changes to improve your processes, products, team structure and anything else that contributes to business growth.
  • Reward change thinking.Visibly reward folks for pushing the envelope, even if you don’t use the ideas. Reward the act of stepping into change and do it visibly. Thanks to the herd instinct, others will follow.
  • Do the corporate shuffle. Change up your daily behaviors , move weekly meetings to different times and days every week. Get folks to sit in different places in meetings (not next to the same folks all the time). Do everything you can to shake up repetitive behaviors. One client even had folks rearrange their desks every friday – swapping monitors to opposite sides etc.  It was called the Friday Firedrill:)
  • Inject the unexpected into your organization. For example, drop by unexpectedly for team meetings, product sessions and customer visits. Sit in on customer service and/or sales calls. Cross pollinate teams with each other and with external inputs to shake up the thinking. Energize your organization with the unexpected!

The Bottom Line

We have the technology. It’s all in our minds. The only thing we need to do is to step into conscious, creative thinking – instead of following the way we’ve always done it.
What will you do to shake up your mind?

Photo courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net and ddpavumba