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USING THE POWER OF PASSION TO EXPLOIT TOUGH TIMES AND WIN NEW CUSTOMERS

Written by: James R. Lucas

Article Overview: There is one large business truth in traumatic times: Either you’re exploiting change, or change is exploiting you? The understandable norm in meltdown times is to hunker down. This can work only as long as customers are willing to cooperate and competitors are ready to follow suit, but it entirely misses the opportunity presented by the crisis, while also having an unfortunate effect on our teams' morale, passion, and commitment. This paper outlines 7 manageable business paradoxes organizations can practice to win. Organizations that do these can recapture the power of passion with their teams, use that passion to capitalize on the tough times and win new customers, and dramatically differentiate themselves from their competitors.

USING THE POWER OF PASSION TO EXPLOIT TOUGH TIMES AND WIN NEW CUSTOMERS

There is one large business truth in traumatic times: Either you’re exploiting change, or change is exploiting you.

The understandable norm in meltdown times is to hunker down. This works only as long as customers are willing to cooperate and competitors are ready to follow suit. But it entirely misses the opportunity presented by the crisis – while also having an unfortunate effect on our team’s morale, passion, and commitment.

But as proactive leaders, we can go beyond trying to survive these meltdown times. We can even go beyond trying to thrive during the down economy. We can plan to win big, to go from victim to victor, to climb higher while our competitors slide.

The challenges of leadership include managing ever-present business paradoxes. Of the 20 paradoxes we’ve studied, there are 7 manageable paradoxes that organizations can practice to win in tough times. The untrained mind, especially under duress, works to reject these competing ideas and pick easy extremes. Meltdown leaders instead embrace these apparent contradictions to unleash passion:

 Spread optimism and spread the ugly truth. Meltdown needs a positive framework. Your people will conquer mountains – if they believe they can and that there’s a point to the battle. But with the hope, they need the unadulterated truth. Cheerleading won’t get the job done if it’s based on wishful thinking rather than hard-core reality. Be a pragmatic idealist in the face of stiff winds. Lead with faith, but mix – in equal amounts – optimism about capturing and keeping customers with ugly truth about the challenges.

 Broaden the vision and narrow the focus. Meltdown is no time to have too much of your future tied to too much of your past vision. Broaden it. What else are we passionate about? How about our customers? Where can we make a unique contribution, given the new rules of the game? What are our non-customers up to right now? At the same time, resources are perhaps scarcer than ever, so we had better spend them on the best opportunities that we have. If we’ve wandered in good times into areas where we’re strangers in a strange land, let’s exit. Fast.

 Nurture customers and fire customers. Of course, it’s always the time to love your customers, but now’s the time to really love the ones with cash and orders, those who currently have more options. Assign interim customer champions to make sure that nothing is taken for granted. Find ways to help your customers through their own meltdowns – they’ll be sure to remember you. Become even more indispensable. But purge the bad customers – the ones who bring you high levels of demand and complaint and low levels of profit and partnership. You have no time for these marginal or negative contributors. Clean out the address book. Use that extra time to win new good customers who are abandoning your hunkered-down competitors.

 Increase freedom and clarify boundaries. The shackles need to go. You’ll be tempted to “batten down the hatches,” but you won’t exploit meltdown with policies, procedures, rules, or regulations. You desperately need good judgment. Give great latitude to anyone who displays it for even a minute. But times are challenging and there’s no time or resources for people to duplicate or overlap efforts. Give more freedom to do what no one else is doing to serve customers, but tell people where the fences are.

 Expand creativity and eliminate ideas. Leaders always claim to value innovation, but few really encourage it or measure it. Right now you need 100 percent of your staff thinking like CEOs. Create forums for ideas and the liberty to implement them fast. But you’ll need to eliminate a high percentage of these ideas very quickly. Find your most passionate people at all levels and create Incubator Teams™ – gatekeepers who can kill thoughts without killing thinking.

 Take more risks and eliminate risk. You’ve got everyone out on the edge. Push people to do things that are a bit scary. Ask your people every day what risky new action to serve customers or improve operations they have on their agendas. But also clearly delineate what no one can do without clearance until meltdown is over. We may have less cash for fewer tries, so we’d better try fewer – but more radical – things. Poor managers do across-the-board cuts. Meltdown managers reduce costs a lot in some areas, so they can increase spending in places where new customers are waiting.

 Execute better and make more mistakes. When customers are already skittish and focusing on price, there’s no room for sloppy execution, mindless bureaucracy, or dumb mistakes. Weed out all waste, no matter how small. But do it to free up resources to make smart mistakes, what we call Intelligent Mistakes™. Try original ideas that could never survive scrutiny in boom times. Meltdown is the time for fresh initiatives out on the cutting edge, where some of them just won’t work. Encourage lots of well-executed mistakes and celebrate every one – while squeezing them for learnings.

We need our team to go far beyond being “happy,” “satisfied,” or “engaged.” We need passion and commitment and Positive Discontent™. Great leaders know that passion to serve and win is built by fresh, positive action, not by fearful retrenching. Organizations that act on these 7 paradoxes can recapture the power of passion with their teams, use that passion to capitalize on the tough times and win new customers, and dramatically differentiate themselves from their competitors.

Above all, keep a nice rhythm between pressure and stress. Great leaders in down economies learn how to convert stress into positive energy, confusion into an opportunity to learn, and insecurity into a challenge to grow. People can perform well in meltdown times, as long as they know they can still be successful. Remember that meltdown is a time for both war rooms and party rooms.

Here’s your opportunity to use some innovative approaches to capture the power of passion with your team. You can turn potential disaster into real growth and wealth. Meltdown is frightening – but if handled well, it may be the opportunity of a lifetime.

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  Managing Through the Power of Paradox
  “Bringing The Power of Passion Into Your Business”
  Competing Strategically in Your Career
  A New Method For Finding Your Passion

Article Tags: apparent contradictions, cheerleading, down economy, duress, extremes, hard core, idealist, norm, optimism, paradoxes, proactive leaders, rules of the game, stiff winds, time resources, tough times, traumatic times, ugly truth, unadulterated truth, unfortunate effect, wishful thinking



Related Forum Posts
Re: THE Most Important Concern At Startup - All of these things are necessary, but I think the first thing you have to check for is PASSION. If you are passionate enough about what you want to do and you've done the research (like we've mentioned above) then you'll have the intestinal fortitude that it takes to get around the road blocks that may get in your way of success. If you don't love what you do you are less apt to fight for it.
Re: Did you reach your goal this year? - I love the honesty in this thread. There is so much power in that! It's reassuring to remember that entrepreneurship is TOUGH. But I find that very motivating. But to know that we all CAN do it, if we only stay the course. Sometimes I can compare myself with the worlds most famous whoever, and then feel discouraged. But that's not really realistic now is it? I've had a lot of ups and downs since I moved to Manhattan 3 years ago, and last year was no exception. I've been really surprised by some happy developments though -- just when you think everything is going to fail, something good happens! Last year, I'm most proud of being invited to speak at 3 different events, getting 6 new clients, and having a magazine article published about my coaching. A few years ago I never would have thought I could do any of that -- I had some really frustrating times where I was seeming to get nowhere. So for me, dealing w/ disappointment,frustration, and having realistic expectations has improved over the last 5 years, and now it's helped me to become a better coach for others going through the same thing. I really do understand what it's like to move to NYC alone w/ a suitcase, not have an apartment,and meanwhile try to start a business w/o support. It was sort of a right of passage for me. Side note story, but sort of represents some of the feelings I'm talking about here -- I used to make paintings. I'd sell them online. I made one called "idealism" which was basically showing how there is no place for idealism, art, or new ideas is a society of grids and stop lights and cubicles. It was an extremely low time for me, and I wanted to take all of my paintings to the dumpster -- I almost did! My mom called me and insisted that I not throw them out. Within a month, a stranger in NYC (I was still in AZ at the time), bought my idealism painting. This buyer must have felt the same way I did, and that alone proved to me that there WAS a place for what I had to offer in the world -- even if I couldn't see it at the time. I then moved to NYC where there was much more of a place for what I had to offer. Moments like that drive me forward, past whatever doesn't seem to be working.


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