Be careful about complaining about your disadvantages and assuming your advantages will guarantee success. Disadvantages can propel you to see your situation from different perspectives. Likewise, advantages can blind you from the necessity to keep searching for new ways to pursue success. The list of people converting disadvantages into great successes is endless and inspiring. Now turn toward yourself. Write down one great success you've had in your life. Then write down the disadvantages or challenges you had to overcome to achieve that success. Then, identify how those disadvantages forced you to look at your situation differently and ultimately helped you achieve success.
Now focus on the present. There are massive challenges being faced by every business right now: conservative banks, a sluggish economy, very wary customers and potential customers, and specific challenges for your organization that you can add to the list. The essential attitude is to stay open to where you are being guided to rather than getting mired down in complaining about the obstacles in the way of your current approach. When I started my consulting firm in January 1998 I had a variety of disadvantages, which I am now very grateful for. I had no business background. Therefore, I had no business industry experience. I had virtually no business connections, except for those business people that my high school students were related to or my friends and family knew of. Therefore, there was no one to pave the way for me through a series of clients. I did not overcome a personal tragedy, win a Super Bowl or write a best-selling book. I had not been on a TV show. These "disadvantages" forced me to think about how I was going to get work. Since I had no industry experience, I was forced to be open to working with people at companies from all kinds of different industries. Since I was not well-known and had no compelling personal story to share, I had to focus on developing very practical, user-friendly ideas people could use right away to improve their performance and results. My challenges forced me to read and read and read and to observe business managers and executives for thousands of hours in the flow of their daily business work lives to understand what made some business people successful and others very unsuccessful. I focused on teaching my ideas through ordinary everyday stories that people could easily relate to. As I look to the future, I'm focused not only on the advantages that I've developed, but much more so on understanding what my current disadvantages and challenges are guiding me to consider as an alternative approach to achieving my objectives. I encourage you to write down all of the disadvantages and challenges that you are facing right now. Then work to identify what advantages those disadvantages are forcing you to uncover. If you feel everything is perfect, then I want you to set for yourself a compelling challenge that will cause you to have to overcome certain obstacles. It's unhealthy for your business to think you have the world by the tail and have nothing to overcome. That can actually lead you on a path to failure because you may very well stop looking for alternative ways to achieve success. |
Explore the August 2011 Issue
Check out more from this issue and find you next story to read.
Latest from Snow Magazine
- NOTEBOOK: Go With The Flow
- NOTEBOOK: Winter Equipment Offers the RoadMAXX System
- NOTEBOOK: Yanmar Unveils Compact Loader Lineup
- NOTEBOOK: Schill Expands in Southwest Ohio
- October Cover Story: Achieving Wet Pavement
- August 2022 Cover Story: Beat The Odds
- May 2022 Cover Story: Bullish on Snow & Ice
- 2022 Top 100