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Growing Your Business in a Difficult Economy

Guest post by: Patrick T. Malone

Article Overview: Admiral James Stockdale was the highest ranking American POW during the Vietnam War. He was held for more than 8 years and after his release wrote a book Love and War that described how he was able to not just survive the ordeal but actually thrive when many others didn’t. The story of his absolute confidence that he would survive coupled with his ability to confront the brutal facts of his current reality came to be known as the “Stockdale Paradox”. Many years later Jim Collins wrote his business masterpiece Good to Great and demonstrated how many companies used the “Stockdale Paradox” to survive and thrive in tough times while many of their competitors fell by the wayside or disappeared completely.

Growing Your Business in a Difficult Economy

Admiral James Stockdale was the highest ranking American POW during the Vietnam War. He was held for more than 8 years and after his release wrote a book Love and War that described how he was able to not just survive the ordeal but actually thrive when many others didn't. The story of his absolute confidence that he would survive coupled with his ability to confront the brutal facts of his current reality came to be known as the "Stockdale Paradox". Many years later Jim Collins wrote his business masterpiece Good to Great and demonstrated how many companies used the "Stockdale Paradox" to survive and thrive in tough times while many of their competitors fell by the wayside or disappeared completely.

The difference is usually attributed to leadership because the leaders in the thriving companies at all levels realized their role was decision getting, not decision making.

Managing a business is decision making but leading a business involves getting decisions from others - your customers, your employees, the stakeholders of your business and if you are a public company, your shareholders. Additionally these leaders weren't just looking for agreement. They were seeking commitment and co-ownership from all those who impact the business. Great companies achieve more impressive business outcomes because of that commitment.

So if you want your company to grow during this difficult economy, you need to enhance your ability to read others especially when they have different points of view. Start by paying more attention to how things are said and less to what is said. The overwhelming majority of our communication is contained in things other that the words we choose.

Our voice, the tone, the inflection, the speed, the volume contain clues that enhance the words. Remember when you were a small child outside playing and your mother called your name? I could tell whether my mother was happy, mad or sad just by the way she said "Patrick".

Another major component of communication is our physical presence. Our body language often contains more than 50% of our communication. Remember fidgeting in church and your mother gave you the "look". Effective leaders pay as much attention to the voice and the body language as they do to the words, so they are much better at reading current attitudes.

But they do more than just read other points of view. That ability allows effective leaders to position their ideas for maximum receptivity. If their audience is complaining they offer help. If there is fear, they position the idea to mitigate or eliminate the fear. If there is opposition, they are able to clarify the problem and offer solutions that fix it or at least remove it as an impediment to moving forward. If there is skepticism, they offer proof. Essentially they are able to do business with any point of view.

Once they are connected to their potential followers, they are able to inspire buy-in and co-ownership for those ideas which produces the actual growth even in difficult times. It is important to realize that effective leaders are not necessarily charismatic. They simply have the skill to reveal their own motivation that others find easy to follow.

The best news of all is this ability is inside every one of you who are reading this article. If you are married you have gained a commitment from your partner. If you have a job, you have gained a commitment from your employer. If you have started your own business and have customers, they have committed to your product or services. The list of your past successful leadership actions is endless.

The challenge for most of you is taking that skill from intuition to conscious competence and ultimately to the professional level of unconscious competence. That journey from good to great has started with reading this article so your challenge is to keep to going to grow your business in this difficult economy and beyond.

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Article Tags: absolute confidence, economy, stockdale paradox, tough times



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