Accept vs Affect: How To Take Control Of Your Outcomes

Read the title again: what we ACCEPT vs what we AFFECT.

You’re here reading this, which means you’re a leader who cares about what you do and how you can grow your business, team and outcomes.

Sadly, the state of mind globally is a bit off tilt. People are relinquishing control of their personal lives, well-being and even their businesses to the economy and change. They believe the market dictates exactly what their fate is. I’m here to tell you, that’s not the case.

You’re not a victim of the economy, circumstances, etc. I’ve seen companies grow in downturns while their competitors wilted away. Are you being effected by the change (right image) or positively affecting your business in spite of it (left image)?

Which one are you?

Any business can flourish with the right ingredients. There are three ways:

Innovation

Ah, innovation. The thing everyone wants more of, but so few put time into making a reality. The greatest companies innovate during booms and busts, meaning the economics of it are smoothed out. But what if you’ve missed the boat and are in a bust time?

You can still innovate, cheaply. Here is where you can get started to leverage the underutilised talent in your organisation during lower volumes of work:

• Start with insights

  • What are your customers’ biggest pain points that you’ve ignored / shelved?

  • What things are your front-line staff seeing happen with customers and services?

  • What trends are emerging in your industry that you can ride the wave of?

  • What trends are happening outside your industry that you can weaponise for growth in your own industry?

• Build, Measure, Learn

  • Lean innovation means grabbing hold of ideas to real problems and testing low cost solutions. Once you’ve piloted it, you look at the data, make changes and then retest.

  • After you’ve got enough validation that the market values what you’ve done, you roll it out full tilt and capitalise on it.

Emotion

You have to stop living in fear of the economy, your customers and any other change that’s on the horizon. People smell fear and your fears are often louder than they should be.

We have a kick@ss tool, Punch Fear In The Face, which you can download here. This will do just the trick.

On top of mastering your own fears and emotions, you need to help your team figure out what is real and rally them around your purpose and what you can affect. Don’t just accept emotions as logical. They aren’t!

Visionary leadership, clear purpose, a worthy cause and a strong commitment to progress will galvanise everyone into making the future happen.

Excellence

There was a famous McKinsey study that found:

[I]t is well established that an increase in price is one of the most effective ways to increase profit. A study by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. way back in the 1990s showed that a 1% increase in price translates into an 11% increase in profits. On the other hand, increasing volume by the same amount resulted in only a 3.3% increase. Cutting variable costs by 1% resulted in a 7.8% increase and cutting fixed costs – only a 2.3% increase.

I don’t care what sector you work in, this can benefit any organisation and means you can better weather the economic storm (and any change for that matter). You affect change, rather accept the effect of change on you (say that ten times fast).

Ask yourself what things you can do to decrease costs and increase positive outcomes. A 1% shift means a massive return on investment / budget reduction. Every little bit helps.

The Ultimate Question

When it all gets too hard and the world is telling you ‘that’s just the way it is’ to ask yourself, just ask yourself:

What am I accepting and what should I be affecting?

You’ve got this. Make Shift Happen.