August 27th, 2009
Making a profit has not changed, it is still and will always be about the relationships that fosters the opportunity to make a profit. To create a relationship, a company must be creditable and interested in their customer’s needs.
Commitment to customer service is key to customer retention. Commitment is not just stated, it is proven. From your receptionist to your company’s president, it is your job to instill confidence in your company. Do you live by your service commitment each day? Do you survey your customers to learn about opportunities to improve when there are failures? Do you think about your customers when making changes within your company that might affect customers?
In these times, more people looking for value and long term commitment perhaps more than ever before. They want to know that they made the right decision and that you will be there for them in a year from now.
How can you enhance business? Add to your services with a technique used in infomercials. When you turn on the T.V. early on Sunday mornings you will find infomercials selling everything from exercise machines to juicers. A back end offer is an extra product or service that is offered after the customer has decided to purchase from you. These after sale offers provide added value to the customer and re-enforces your interests in them. These add on value deals are so profitable that many take a slight loss on the front end to provide great deals on the back end. There is no question that deals like these are part of a company’s customer retention strategy. Everyone appreciates an added incentive with an added gift card for a future purchase or stay and plan vacation.
Follow up frequently and not just at holiday time. Use the slow summer months to communicate interesting information and offer incentives that you might normally only offer at Christmas time. Ask for referrals and demonstrate appreciation with a small gifts or opportunities for an online helpful seminars.
The back end of the sale can be more important than the front end when trying to retain and build your business.
Tags: gift cards, incentives
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April 30th, 2009
Beyond the usual top 10 lists for managers to help them create successful teams is our top 9 list:
1) Don’t forget to ask for guidance from those you respect.
2) Meditate for calm and for answers received to help you manage through transitions.
3) Act your budget. Don’t over commit but do spend money on employee recognition and rewards. Make your employees aware that they are appreciated and that you do spend allocated budget dollars each year. Many of us can probably remembering hearing about our managers who wanted to look like heroes with surplus budget dollars that did not spend a dollar on their employees.
4) Don’t always be right. Your a manager after all and not a King. A few of the toughest words we could say are ”I am sorry” and “I am wrong” but they are the phrases that will gain respect if they are sincere. Your employees have other experiences that should be solicited creating strong and mutually respectful teams.
5) Don’t let fun pass you by. Conduct non-meeting surprises for your team. Invite them to a meeting then surprise them with food and music for a social hour. Take time to interact playfully with your team so they see the human side of you.
6) Remember the importance of the three C’s: Courage standing up for what your team needs and what you feel is right. Commitment regardless how difficult or hot things get stay the course. Speak sincerely and try to be positive. Consistencypractice what you preach over and over again. If you ask your employee to be quality conscious and customer centrix then you should demonstrate that those goals are important to you.
7) Invest in friendships. What helps people cope, create and succeed are friendships. Network and add to your circle of friends as if you were collecting flowers for a beautiful bouquet. Take time for coffees and lunches nurturing your relationships with good discussions and lots of laughs.
 Teach others to get M.A.D. Remind them to their take concerns or complaints and turn them into spring boards to Make A Difference.
9) Keep things simple. Don’t seek to impress and feed just your ego. Work hard, work for the good, reward emloyees and have fun!
Tags: gift cards, recognition and rewards, reward programs
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April 24th, 2009
Whether you run a business, or are an employee, or manage a family – you are always ‘selling‘ something.
Selling is the art of exchanging value. In the commercial world this is a simple equation – money is given in exchange for a product or service.
In the office, ’selling’ might happen when you try and convince others of your proposal, or negotiate a pay rise.
On the home front, you are constantly ’selling’ ideas to your kid (or spouse!) about what is in their best interest.
Surprisingly, considering how much we actually do selling, a fear of selling is a pervasive experience.
If you’ve got a ‘I don’t-want-to-be-a-slimey-salesperson’ fear of selling, then there’s never been a better time to knock that block on its head.
Here are three main reasons to deal with this issue now:
1. If you don’t sell, your business (or personal life) suffers – that’s obvious.
2. If you don’t sell, your confidence suffers – that’s obvious too.
3. If you don’t sell, you can’t help as many people. Obvious, but not always remembered.
Why do people feel resistance to selling? You might recognise yourself in one of these situations:
You love to buy, but you hate being ’sold’. You might have had that sleazy car salesman experience where the subtext is – ‘they don’t care about me – they just want my money’. Like a dog sniffing a skunk, you can smell ‘desperate’ a million miles away.
You believe all salespeople have a touch of ’snake oil’ deceit about them. Somewhere along the line, from your parents, friends, school, or daily life, you’ve linked salespeople with ‘insincere, dishonest, just out for themselves, just trying to screw the little guy, cheaters, liars’ and so on. No one likes to buy from selfish people!
Fear of being rejected:
If you make an offer you’re afraid of people saying ‘no’. It’s the cold sharp knife of rejection. Or you’re afraid that people are going to think YOU are the slimey salesman!
These are all clues that you’ve got some limiting beliefs about selling and what you have to offer.
How to get over your resistance to selling:
Step 1.You need to reframe your concept of ’selling’. Selling is an exchange of value. For example, if I give you something, you give me something in return of equal value. I give you two cows, you give me three bushels of hay. I give you my product or service, then you give me a certain amount of money. There’s giving AND receiving.
Step 2. You need to believe in your product or service heart and soul –regardless of whether people buy it or not. You would rave about it even if you weren’t selling it. This is called the ‘raving fan syndrome’.
If you don’t have the ‘raving fan syndrome’ about your product or service, here are some questions to consider: How do you feel about the price of the product/service? Is it a no-brainer/sensible investment?
Do you use it or have used it before yourself?
If you weren’t selling it, would you still use it or rave about it?
Unless you answer ‘yes’ to each of these questions you will have an ‘out of integrity experience’ in your selling – and you will give off that shonky used-car-salesman vibe.
Step 3. Practice this mantra: “the customer is more important than the sale”. You may not make the sale this time, but if you focus on offering value and helping people with their needs, rather than serving your own, you will build a lifetime fan. And that will mean more ’sales’ over the long run.
Tags: gift cards, incentive, incentives, point rewards, rewards
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March 15th, 2009
How Are You Treated By Others?
Self-acceptance begins in infancy, with the influence of your parents and siblings and other important people.
Your own level of self-acceptance is determined largely by how well you feel you are accepted by the important people in your life.
Your attitude toward yourself is determined largely by the attitudes that you think other people have toward you. When you believe that other people think highly of you, your level of self-acceptance and self-esteem goes straight up.
The best way to build a healthy personality involves understanding yourself and your feelings.
Let the Light Shine In
This is achieved through the simple exercise of self-disclosure. For you to truly understand yourself, or to stop being troubled by things that may have happened in your past, you must be able to disclose yourself to at least one person. You have to be able to get those things off your chest. You must rid yourself of those thoughts and feelings by revealing them to someone who won’t make you feel guilty or ashamed for what has happened.
Understand What Makes You Tick
The second part of personality development follows from self-disclosure, and it’s called self-awareness. Only when you can disclose what you’re truly thinking and feeling to someone else can you become aware of those thoughts and emotions If the other person simply listens to you without commenting or criticizing, you have the opportunity to become more aware of the person you are and why you do the things you do. You begin to develop perspective, or what the Buddhists call “detachment.”
Be Honest With Yourself
Now we come to the good part. After you’ve gone through self-disclosure to self-awareness, you arrive at self-acceptance. You accept yourself for the person you are, with good points and bad points, with strengths and weaknesses, and with the normal frailties of a human being. When you develop the ability to stand back and look at yourself honestly, and to candidly admit to others that you may not be perfect but you’re all you’ve got, you start to enjoy a heightened sense of self-acceptance.
Do An Inventory of Your Accomplishments
A valuable exercise for developing higher levels of self-acceptance involves doing an inventory of yourself. In doing this inventory, your job is to accentuate the positive and minimize the negative.
Think of your unique talents and abilities. Think of your core skills, the things that you do exceptionally well that account for your success in your profession and in your personal life right now.
Think About Your Future
Think about your future possibilities and the fact that your potential is virtually unlimited. You can do what you want to do and go where you want to go. You can be the person you want to be. You can set large and small goals and make plans and move step-by-step, progressively toward their realization. There are no obstacles to what you can accomplish except the obstacles that you create in your mind.
Action Exercises
Here are three steps you can take immediately to put these ideas into action:
First, sit down with your spouse, or a good friend, and tell him or her about something that is troubling you and is still causing you unhappiness.
Second, develop perspective on your problem by standing back from it and imagining that it was happening to someone else. What advice would you give to that person?
Third, think continually about the good experiences and accomplishments you have enjoyed in the past. Remind yourself regularly that you are a pretty good person and you’ve done a lot of good things in your life.
- You have more control over your destiny
- You become an active contributor rather than a passive observer
- Others look to you for leadership
- You gain the reputation as a problem solver
- You enhance your career opportunities
- You enjoy the satisfaction that comes from getting things done…the power of positive doing
- You experience less anger, frustration and helplessness – all leading to better physical health
- You realize a positive spillover effect into your personal life at home
According to Gallagher and Ventura, the most important words of personal responsibility are as follows:
The 10 most important words:
I won’t wait for others to take the first step.
The 9 most important words:
If it is to be, it’s up to me.
The 8 most important words:
If not me, who? If not now, when?
The 7 most important words:
Let me take a shot at it.
The 6 most important words:
I will not pass the buck.
The 5 most important words:
You can count on me.
The 4 most important words:
It IS my job!
The 3 most important words:
Just do it!
The 2 most important words:
I will.
The most important word:
Me
Tags: gift cards, incentives, rewards
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March 6th, 2009
Ready to leave your job behind and become your own boss? It takes a certain kind of person to make it through the first few years. To help you along, we’ve culled the best tips from our own members – people with years’ of experience in running their own business.
- Don’t work for less than you can afford to, but do offer a discount to customers or clients who sign contracts with you.
- Find people who will refer jobs to you. If they send you nightmare jobs, make sure they’re balanced out with rewarding (profitable!) ones.
- Surround yourself with supportive people and don’t be discouraged by anyone. If your idea is good and you’re determined to stick with it through the first few difficult years, your chances of success are great.
- Be flexible in your thinking. Prepare to change the way you work, the products you use and the services you offer, in order to meet the demands of your customers.
- Admit your mistakes, correct them and carry on.(For example, if you purchase a piece of equipment that does not meet your expectations, send it back, sell it or exchange it!)
- Develop a good relationship with your bank manager and creditors. Show a genuine interest in solving problems. Pay as much as you can afford to, to everyone to whom you owe money.
- Get trained! You’ll be spending a lot of time doing things that have nothing to do with your area of expertise, like bookkeeping, marketing, and IT support!
- Avoid isolation. Even if you work closely with your clients, you won’t be part of a gang anymore. Develop your own network of entrepreneurs that you see regularly and bounce ideas off. Ideally they’ll allow you to vent your anger and share your successes.
- Separate your work and personal life. Set your working hours and stick to a strict timetable. When you’re not available to clients, leave a message on your answer machine letting them know when they can expect a reply from you. Let them know how to reach you in an emergency.
- Plan some ‘thinking time’ into every day. If you pack your diary with back-to-back activities, your business will never grow.
- Plan time to do something you enjoy at least a few times a week – recharge your batteries!
- Write a business plan so you’re clear about what you’re doing, and update it every year.
- Develop an excellent telephone manner and react quickly to any complaints or problems.
- Confirm orders personally and immediately, especially those you receive on email.
- Never lose sight of the big picture – look for innovative, little-explored directions in which to take your business.
- When you find someone cleverer than you, employ them!
- Solicit advice from people who know, for example, other entrepreneurs and reputable small business advisers – the DTI offers lots of information and support for new businesses.
- Don’t enter a business or a venture that you know nothing about. You’ll be running to catch up for the rest of your business life.
- Have an existing, loyal customer base and start locally.
- Be aware that you will get through any initial investment quickly, so ensure you are covered financially until at least the end of the second year.
- Focus on a specific goal and work at it until it’s achieved
- Never worry about how to get things done when you are first developing your idea.Money and resources will come together once you have set your goals and begun to work at them.
- Make quality in every aspect of your business your primary focus and aim. If it isn’t, you will eventually go out of business.
- Use the Internet. Use email. Build a website (if you aren’t familiar with websites, try HTML for Dummies), send out email newsletters, buy online banner advertisements and register your site with all the major search engines.
- Delegate. You might have to hire a good PA, lawyer, or marketing professional to ensure you’ll be profitable in the future.
Tags: gift cards, how to build relationships, how to motivate, incentives, rewards
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February 13th, 2009
Step #1: When you change your thinking, you change your beliefs.
I am going to work you through a six-step process of how to change, and it begins with thinking. It begins with the mind. Beliefs are nothing more than a by-product of what you have thought long enough about that you have bought into–always remember that. What you believe is a collection of continual thoughts that have formed themselves into a conviction.
“Although not all change is the same, there is one common element to change, and that is thinking.” That is a great truth. That is not mine, it’s out of a book called, The Seven Levels of Change. When you break down the process of thinking into manageable number of steps, you reduce the perceived risk associated with change. Being creative is when you think about your thinking, being innovative is when you act on your ideas.
Step #2: When you change your beliefs, you change your expectations.
Belief is the knowledge that we can do something. It is the inner feeling that what we undertake, we can accomplish. For the most part, all of us have the ability to look at something and know whether we can do it. So, in belief there is power: our eyes are opened; our opportunities become plain; our visions become realities. Our beliefs control everything we do. If we believe we can or we believe we cannot, we are correct. Accomplishment is more than a matter of working harder; it is a matter of believing positively. It’s called the “sure enough” factor. If you expect to succeed, “sure enough,” you will; if you expect to fail, “sure enough,” you will. We become outside what we believe inside.
Step #3: When you change your expectations, you change your attitude.
I love Ben Franklin’s quote: “Blessed is the one who expects nothing, for he shall receive it.” I heard a story the other day about a man who went to the fortuneteller who looked in the crystal ball and said, “Oh, my. This is not good. I look in this ball and see that you will be poor and unhappy until you’re 45 years old.” The guy said, “Oh, that’s terrible. Well, then what’s going to happen?” The fortuneteller said, “You’ll get used to it.”
Your expectations are going to determine your attitude. Most people get used to average; they get used to second best. Nelson Boswell said, “The first and most important step toward success is the expectation that we can succeed.”
Step #4: When you change your attitude, you change your behavior.
William James was right when he said, “That which holds our attention determines our action.” When our attitude begins to change, when we become involved with something, our behavior begins to change. The reason that we have to make personal changes is that we cannot take our people on a trip that we have not made. Too many leaders try to be travel agents instead of tour guides–they try to send people where they have never been. We give them a brochure and a “Bon Voyage!” And off they go and we wave to them, and we ask them to tell us how it was when they come back. A tour guide says, “Let me take you where I’ve been. Let me tell you what I have gone through. Let me tell you what I know. Let me show you what I’ve experienced in my life.”
Step #5: When you change your behavior, you change your performance.
Leroy Eims said, “How can you know what is in your heart? Look at your behavior. There is no better sign of the heart than the life.” The truest test of where a person is going is their behavior.
Unfortunately, most people would rather live with old problems than new solutions. We would rather be comfortable than correct; we would rather stay in a routine than make changes. Even when we know that the changes are going to be better for us, we often don’t make them because we feel uncomfortable or awkward about making that kind of a change.
Until we can get used to living with something that is not comfortable, we cannot get any better.
Step #6: When you change your performance, you change your life.
Change makes a person feel alone, even if others are going through it. You say, “Oh, man! Goodness! I know the others are changing, but I don’t think they’re having the difficulty I’m having.” There is something about the awkwardness and the time that it takes to make proper changes that just seems to isolate you from everyone else, even when a group is going through it together. You just kind of feel, “But my situation’s a little bit different, and I think I’m just not quite as fast as the other ones,” and there’s a tendency to feel isolated, lonely, and withdrawn when you’re going through this change.
It is easier to turn failure into success than an excuse into a possibility. A person can fail and turn around and understand their failure, make it a success; but I want to tell you–a person who makes excuses for everything will never truly succeed. I promise you, when you excuse what you are doing and excuse where you are, and you allow the exceptions, you fail to reach your potential. Don’t you know some people who just have an excuse for everything? Why they could not, should not, did not, would not, have not, will not. If “ifs” and “buts” were candies and nuts, we would all have a Merry Christmas. It is impossible to turn excuses into possibilities.
Hope is the foundational principle for all change. People change because they have hope. If people do not have hope, they will not change. You are responsible for the changes that you make in your life, but the good news is, you can make the changes you need to make in your life.
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December 10th, 2008
These ten steps will help you achieve your goals in 2009.
1. Make the commitment to reach your goal. “One person with a commitment is worth a hundred who only have an interest.” Mary Crowley.
2. Commit yourself to detailed accountability. Record your progress toward your goals every night, and list the six most important things you need to do the next day. Daily discipline is the key to reaching your goals.
3. Build your life on a sold foundation of honesty, character, integrity, trust, love, and loyalty. This foundation will give you an honest shot at reaching any goal you have set properly.
4. Break your intermediate and long-range goals into increments.
5. Be prepared to change. You can’t control the weather, inflation, interest rates, Wall Street, etc. Change your decision to move toward a goal carefully–but be willing to change your direction to get there as conditions and circumstances demand.
6. Share your “give-up” goals (i.e., give up smoking, being rude, procrastinating, being late, eating too much, etc.) with many people. Chances are excellent they’re going to encourage you.
7. Become a team player. Remember: You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.
8. See the reaching. In your imagination see yourself receiving that diploma, getting that job or promotion, making that speech, moving into the home of your dreams, achieving that weight-loss goal, etc.
9. Each time you reach a goal your confidence will grow so that you can do bigger and better things. After accomplishing any goal, record it in your journal, Weekly Planner or Palm Pilot.
10. Remember, what you get by reaching your destination isn’t nearly as important as what you become by reaching your goals–what you will become is the winner you were born to be!
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December 4th, 2008
The strength and durability of a building is found in its foundation. The same is true in a life. What we accomplish and the effect we have on those around us is not only in what we do, but also in who we are. In fact, what we do is driven by who we are, what we believe and value and by the principles that we live by.
Principles give us direction in whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. They are transferable to any given situation and will determine our direction. Those who do not have permanent principles will find themselves drifting along and making decisions that are personally expedient, short-term oriented and usually bad for their long-term success.
So I thought I would share with you the principles that govern my life. These are the ideas and concepts that drive my behavior, my career, and my family. I would encourage you to sit down and write out your own principles. Those that drive your life, or at least that you want to drive your life!
God first, others second, me third. Gale Sayers, the running back of the Chicago Bears wrote a book titled “I am Third.” This is true. If I am to do and be what I want to do and be in this life, I recognize that I must have my priorities right. Some people think that the way to success is to put themselves first. This is short-term thinking. Yes, you may be able to accomplish much in the near-term, but long-term, the best is accomplished by those who live by the above.
Always be completely honest. You really only have your character when it comes right down to it, and honesty is the quickest way to determine your character. Live in such a way that you can be completely honest and be willing to accept the responsibility that being completely honest will bring.
Make it your goal to help others, income will come from that. Zig Ziglar is the one who got me thinking about that. If you take care of others and their needs, you will earn your income. If you simply try to earn income, people will stop responding to you and you will have defeated yourself.
You reap what you sow. This is the most common truth on earth. You put an apple seed into the ground, you get an apple tree. An orange seed produces an orange tree. If you invest, your money will grow. If you eat right and exercise you will lose weight. If you are kind to others they will be kind to you.
The true measure of a man’s wealth is in the things he can afford not to buy. This is one of my favorite quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Things are great to have and so is money, but true riches are the priceless things we can’t buy, like our family, our integrity and the sense of a job well done. Pursue true wealth.
Work smart – and hard. Some say you should work smart, not hard. I say work smart and hard. A good day of hard work is a blessing and ought to be appreciated. Hard work is what changes the world – as long as it is smart, hard work!
Follow through on all commitments. If there is one thing I can’t stand it is when someone doesn’t do what they say they will. When we don’t do what we say we will, we essentially say that the job wasn’t important, the people we promised it to aren’t important, and that we can’t be trusted. This is a good way to short-circuit your success.
Challenge others to greatness. There are enough people who will hold out the low bar for people to step over. I want to be a person who holds up the high bar, causing people to have to run and jump with all their might. And when they clear that high bar, I want to be there celebrating with them!
Find ways to generously give of your resources. The old saying is true – you can’t take it with you. But you can spread it around to lots of people while you are here. If we wait until we die to give money away, we don’t get any satisfaction in seeing how it is used and enjoyed. Write a few good-sized checks each month!
Treat people right no matter how they treat you. You cannot control another person’s behavior. It took me a long time to realize that. I can only control my behavior. And I can choose to do what is right no matter how another person treats me. If everybody retaliated every time someone treated them bad, we would have a mess on our hands. Instead, choose to act appropriately at all times.
When relationships go bad, be the first to hold out the olive branch. Life is too short to leave a relationship broken. As much as it is up to me, I will pursue reconciliation, for their sake, and for mine. I don’t want to get to the end of my life and wish I tried harder in my relationships. For this reason I attempt to restore broken relationships.
Regularly try new things. This is what keeps the spice of life going! Try new foods, go to new places, and make new friends. You will be amazed at the joy you receive and are able to give when you make it a habit to try new things. Break out of the mold, do something unusual today!
Treat everyone equally. No one is better than anyone else. I know people with tens of millions of dollars and people who do not have two nickels to rub together. They are both equally valuable and worthy of being treated as such. Don’t fall into the trap of treating some people better than others. It doesn’t matter what color they are or how much money they have or what country they come from, treat them with the respect and dignity each human deserves.
Use any success you have to help others. What good is success that only helps you? Instead, use the money you make to help others. Use the connections you make to help someone else up. Use the knowledge you achieve to give someone else a leg up. Take what you have and give to others so that they may join you on the journey of success.
Look down the economic scale more often than up. When I look up the economic scale too often I become greedy and unsatisfied. I become selfish. Looking down at others who have less than me on a regular basis keeps me humble. It reminds me of all of the blessings I have and keeps me thankful for them.
I want to encourage you to sit down soon and write out the principles that guide your life. It is an excellent exercise that will help you refocus and keep your life going in the right direction!
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December 2nd, 2008
Whatever dream you decide to go after, whether it is a family, or a career goal, you must consciously decide that it is your life’s mission. Benjamin Disraeli said, “The secret of success is constancy to purpose.” You must go at it obsessively and set high standards for yourself along the way. There is no room for compromise when you are charting a course for your life or your career.
I spoke to a group of sharp young people not long ago, and when I finished, some of the fellows came up and said they were interested in becoming professional speakers. They invited me to go out with them that evening to have a good time. These fellows looked as though they knew how to have a serious good time.
I had planned to work on my delivery that night by listening to the audio of my speech. I record my speeches and listen to them later so I can study what works and what does not work with a particular audience. In effect, I listen to the audience listening to me.
I was tempted to go with these fellows, and back when I was their age I probably would have given in to that temptation and gone. But I have become more disciplined and more committed to my craft. A friend of mine, Wes Smith, wrote a humor book called Welcome to the Real World, and in it he offered advice to fresh high-school and college graduates. He had a line in the book that pertains to the situation I faced that night. It said, “Having a drink with the boys after work every night is a bad idea. Notice that the boss doesn’t do it. That is why he is the boss and they are still the boys.”
Wes told me that he wrote that line with one particular group of hard-partying young businessmen in mind, and five years after the book came out, he ran into one of them. The guy volunteered that he’d read that line in Wes’s book and decided never to go drinking after work again. It paid off, he said. He had risen to a vice-presidency at a savings and loan.
In my drive to become a public speaker, I developed that kind of focus, too. There is not a lot of time for hard partying if you are pursuing greatness. It was not that these young fellows were not serious about their interest in professional speaking, but they were just as serious about having a good time. I don’t believe they were focused on their goals. They were seeking a profession but they were not on a mission to make a dramatic difference in the world. I am. You should be too.
Rather than the party crowd, I prefer to seek out people with knowledge that might be useful. I like to find out what books successful and intelligent people are reading. I want access to the information that contributes to their success and intelligence.
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November 24th, 2008
Will Smith is a success by any Hollywood standard. He is a Grammy Award-winning rapper. He starred in a hit television sitcom. He was nominated for two Best-Actor Academy Awards. He’s had eight consecutive films that grossed more than $100 million. He’s also a film and television producer. And you may not know that he was accepted at, but did not attend MIT—yes, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
One of the secrets to his success might surprise you. It’s self-doubt.
Smith can’t run away from his fears. Whenever he feels fear, he faces it head-on. He tells a story about being in Jamaica as a young man, where he watched people jump off a high cliff into the water below. He was fascinated, but also terrified because he didn’t know how to swim. He wasn’t going to let that stop him, however; so he walked to the edge of the cliff. Several minutes later, he jumped and obviously lived to tell the tale.
Much of his behavior is in response to a fear that he couldn’t live up to the high esteem in which he was held by his mother and grandmother. He concentrated his efforts on trying to meet their expectations. Smith still has some self-doubts, especially in terms of fulfilling the perceptions of those he loves.
Of his fear, Smith said in an interview, “I’ve learned to use it; to flip that negative energy around and make it a challenge. I keep going because I doubt myself. It drives me to do better. I’ve learned that the mastery of self-doubt is the key to success.”
I’ll admit that there have been times when I have questioned a decision or approached a problem and responded more out of fear than reason. I maintained a pretty calm façade, but truth be told, I had all my fingers and toes crossed for good luck. Most of the time, the result was exactly what I had hoped for. A few times, I got fooled.
Those less-than-desirable outcomes serve as a vivid reminder that we cannot get too arrogant. A measure of self-doubt is a healthy part of management strategy. In fact, it’s a necessary ingredient. As French author Jules Renard said, “There are moments when everything goes well; don’t be frightened, it won’t last.” How true!
The trick, then, is to be able to adjust to the peaks and valleys, and still keep your business or career on track. When should you let your doubts rule your actions?
Always! Yes, always. It’s good to question things you have always taken for granted, and things that have never been tried. Never confuse confidence with arrogance. Confidence allows you to proceed with some reason to believe that you will succeed. Arrogance prevents you from really examining your decisions, and is almost always a recipe for disaster.
Eleanor Roosevelt had an interesting observation: “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
How else will you know whether you can succeed if you always take the easy and proven route? How will you find what needs to be changed if you do not question the way things are done?
Perhaps the experience of Tony Verna, the television producer/director who invented instant replay for sporting events, will shed some light on the importance of being able to doubt yourself.
Instant replay was used for the first time in a 1963 Army-Navy football game. “The idea came to me out of frustration,” Verna said. “Before replays, football telecasts were filled with dead spots. . . It really destroyed the momentum of the telecasts. Replays gave you something to show during the pauses. It seemed to make the game go faster.”
Today, instant replay is a permanent fixture of sports telecasts. And now, it’s used to review questionable officials’ calls, which can cause long delays, contradicting the original purpose of instant replay’s creation.
Verna said, “It’s ironic. The reason I started instant replays was to keep the momentum going. Now the replays are slowing the whole thing down.”
The other irony is that now, Verna doubts that his invention improved the broadcasts in the way he envisioned. But they are also removing doubt from the game’s officiating! Go figure.
Mackay’s Moral: Reasonable doubt helps you work the bugs out.
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