Behind the Scenes with Business Beliefs

It’s impossible to separate our human beliefs from our business. Our beliefs about everything from our breakout success to our abject failure are pre-programmed by our human experiences.  Our beliefs from our personal lives also impact our business thinking and behaviors.  You can’t simply leave behind the human mind when we step into our office.

What’s really interesting is how many of our business beliefs aren’t even our own.

B School and Beyond

So many of our beliefs about business were programmed into us by others. First there were the lessons we learned from our parents, teachers, siblings and peers as we were growing up. We all were taught beliefs about how far we could go, what skills we did and didn’t have, what was possible and impossible for our lives. Those foundational beliefs set the stage for our adult beliefs about our abilities in business.

Then there were the best practices thinking and behaviors we all had stuffed into our minds in B School. Many of which are as out-dated as a vacuum tube. From the way we perceive our teams to the way we create and depend on reports and numbers to”tell us the truth,” so many of our learned business approaches are just plain yesterday’s news.

We’re also programmed by our experiences in business.

• We do well in a role and decide it’s the best job for us ever. We become so focused on that job we miss other more exciting opportunities right in front of our faces. We’re locked in and we don’t even know it.
• We decide to take our products into a new market. We fail. Our learning? We’ll never do that again!  So we don’t. Even if that same market is the breakout opportunity we need for the next generation of our product.
• We endure a boss who is just plain nasty. The very image of them makes us squirm. The two years we work for him are miserable. Fifteen years later we have an immediately negative reaction to a new peer in our management team. No matter what this person does or says, we dislike them. It never occurs to us that this person physically resembles that nasty old boss. But our unconscious mind remembers, and responds.

Every experience in our lives creates beliefs that drive our business thinking and actions right now.  Every  teacher, sibling, parent or mentor who taught us also is impacting our business thinking. That’s a lot of people and stuff working behind the scenes, now isn’t it?

So how do we identify  the limiting beliefs that run rampant in our unconscious minds without us even knowing they are in the mix? The beliefs that we didn’t create ourselves, as well as the beliefs we did create that are just plain limiting our success?

We’ll chat about that on Thursday.