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Making a Promise to Your Business

Guest post by: John Heap

Article Overview: In business we learn how to be logical, disciplined and structured – making decisions on evidence, ensuring we have relevant data to hand. However, in small businesses and in entrepreneurial situations, we also know that sometimes we have to act on gut instincts, on intuition. This article explains why sometimes, making a promise to your own business is a way of forcing yourself into such situations to unlock the real potential behind your business.

Making a Promise to Your Business

In business we learn how to be logical, disciplined and structured – making decisions on evidence, ensuring we have relevant data to hand.

However, in small businesses and in entrepreneurial situations, we also know that sometimes we have to act on gut instincts, on intuition.

(Managers are educated to avoid risk … or at least to build broad portfolios of risk where the danger of any one risk is contained by other projects or activities. Entrepreneurs often cannot – or will not – do this. They put their faith behind something, backing their own judgment … sometimes in the face of quite large odds. They take bigger risks … and are entitled to bigger rewards.)

So, if we believe in doing things as an ‘act of faith’ … it is sometimes worth borrowing the ‘rules’ or ‘processes’ of other situations that use faith as the basis of decision-making. This does not mean that you need conventional, religious faith … just that you recognise that you need faith in your product, your service, your team … to deliver.

So, think about the ‘declaration of faith’ you would make today in regard to your business. Make a promise to yourself .. and to the organisation … to deliver a particular future.

Of course, you must be confident you can deliver … but you might not know at this time how you are going to get there. This is the leap of faith.

If you make such a promise – and make it with real faith – you are committing to that future … to bringing it about, to making it real.

It is a way of unlocking the potential of the business, of the team … giving everyone a vision of the future … a future that you know is attainable, but one that probably relies on your leadership … and possibly the active involvement of the rest of the team.

We normally make promises to people we can trust. Do you trust yourself and your team to deliver. If so, make yourself and the team the promise.

It’s a big step. But it is one that divides the true entrepreneur from the simpler business owner.

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Article Tags: act of faith, acting on instinct, entrepreneurism, making decisions



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