The last blog … about where your organization might be on the recovery path … generated quite a few responses. Readers wanted to get a sense … our sense … of where they were on their personal recovery path to reclaiming the driver’s seat of their business and look for those places that they could leap forward to a full recovery.
It wasn’t the number of responses we received that was the surprise. Rather it was the number of them that conveyed that their recovery was not in their control. They indicated that they had done just about everything they could do and that further progress was dependent on something out of their hands. This “something” ranged form their location or their market that had gone on hiatus or even the government’s failure to do “this” or “that”.
What?
Talk about seeing yourself as truly trapped … this is it. This means that they can only hope that those controlling issues change before they are unable to sustain any longer and must close up their business. Wow. . . If that were me, a good night’s sleep would be quite a ways off!
Obviously, falling into the mindset of being victimized can occur within any size and type of organization. You can be a business of one, ten or hundreds. The fact remains that to the extent we are willing to believe and operate from a place of ‘there’s nothing I can do until …..’ we are going to feel stuck with very, very limited options. I do not want to suggest that this is highly unusual. What’s wrong with it is that, if we remain there, it prevents us from making the gains and improvements that are available to us … if only we change the governing mindset.
If you are able to admit that you might be stuck in this way … a little or a lot …perhaps your mindset or the one that exists within your organization is the obstacle or unrecognized monkey holding you back. The question becomes what can you do about it? Consider these thoughts and questions:
- Are you tired of allowing ‘the economy’ to be the boss of you? In relinquishing the ‘bosses’ role how has this stopped the creative juices from flowing freely as a means of getting around the situation?
- If you were to draw the line and say ‘victim no more!’ what options might be available to you that you have never thought of previously? The ideas that arise don’t have to be right … they just have to be possible and above all be possible for the current playing field that you are on. Then you have new ‘solutions’ to consider.
- What conversations … with past clients or suppliers or others in your field … might inform you as to what today’s buyer of your product or service really wants and needs? (Odds are their arena has almost certainly changed as well.)
- If you’re thinking of the overall organization, how can you motivate and involve all members to be involved in the solution to moving from ‘stuck’ to’ back in charge’? Some of the best solutions reside within those who are seldom asked or charged with the task of providing ideas and solutions on the broad scale.
Here’s what we know and have seen frequently. No one chooses to be in the position of victim except for when it helps us to understand or justify why we might be in our current position. And even then it’s heavy and demoralizing. Once you can recognize that at least some of the issue holding you back is the mindset of a stuck victim … you don’t have to get angry … just get even and take back the control! There’s no energy drink that can match this realization and the power that comes with it.
What do you think?
Mike Dorman
