Business: Meet the Prime Business Challenge

I assume you’re reading Prime Business Alert! because you’re looking for every edge to get ahead and you have learned that the psychological aspects of business are essential to your success. I’m going to assume that you already work hard and you believe that you’re doing everything you can to achieve your goals. Yet is there more to be done? I say, absolutely! So I want to present to you the Prime Business Challenge to see if you can take your efforts to a new and higher level.

Why Prime Business Challenge?

The Prime Business Challenge, in its most basic form, is to RAISE THE BAR! Why the need for the Prime Business Challenge, you may ask.

In the last decade, there has a been a tectonic shift in the business world. With the emergence of international competition and the advent of new technologies, we live in a truly global marketplace where not only do companies have more competition from more places than ever before, but individual businesspeople do as well. As the best-seller author, Thomas Friedman, suggests, “the world is flat.”

In this highly competitive and demanding environment, there is no room for less than maximum effort and stratospheric goals. Ask yourself what your competition is doing right now. Because if you’re not doing everything you can to succeed, the chances are that there is someone out there, either in the U.S., China, India, or another country, who is willing to do what it takes.

Here’s a simple axiom: If you keep doing the same thing, you will continue to stay where you are. The Prime Business Challenge will stimulate growth by creating greater commitment, energy, and focus in your efforts. The Prime Business Challenge will motivate you to get to the next level and, to get to that next level, you can’t just do more of the same harder and longer, you must do something different.

New Performance Mindset

A performance mindset is the attitude and expectations you hold about your performance and productivity. In my work with businesspeople and companies, I have often seen a performance mindset that was self-referenced (meaning you compare yourself only with your own past performance) and that could be best characterized as having a focus on “reasonable” progress. For example, one company I worked with was content with annual growth of 5-15 percent in a global industry that was growing at a much faster rate. The goal of reasonable progress is, of course, reasonable success. Perfectly reasonable, wouldn’t you agree? The benefits to reasonable growth is that it is safely attainable with little risk. If you aim for reasonable growth, you have a very high probability of success. But the costs can include progress that is too slow to keep up with your competitors.

The Prime Business Challenge dares you to change your performance mindset. I want you to raise the bar in your performance mindset by striving for “unreasonable” progress, which means higher standards, more aggressiveness in pursuit of your goals, and generally getting out of your performance comfort zone. Also, if possible, create a competitor point of reference in your performance mindset, which means identifying your biggest competitors and working to surpass them. The goal of unreasonable progress is “spectacular success.” The benefits of attempting unreasonable progress are a sense of purpose and excitement, as well as the possibility of spectacular success. The costs include more effort and stress, higher risk of failure, and the possibility of disappointment in not achieving such success.

The thought of unreasonable progress and spectacular success can be, at the same time, energizing and intimidating. Great success is, I’m sure, what you want, yet you also don’t want to fail. But to mitigate whatever anxiety you may feel about striving for something that is unreasonable, I can state with great confidence that if you commit fully to such a lofty goal, though you may not achieve spectacular success, you will far exceed your reasonable progress and success.

Obstacles to the Prime Business Challenge

The Prime Business Challenge wouldn’t be a challenge if it were easy or free of obstacles. There are three obstacles that I find more prevalent in my work with businesspeople and companies.

Comfort and complacency. When you’ve done something the same way for many years, it’s easy to get comfortable and settled in your ways. And your current approach may have worked pretty well (i.e., reasonable success), so it’s also easy to get complacent.

Fear of change. Few people like change; it’s unpredictable and you can never be sure how you will change or what the result will be. So it’s safer and easier to just keep doing what you’re doing rather than face the uncertainty of change.

Inertia. Newton’s First Law of Motion, inertia is defined as “a body in motion tends to remain in motion and a body at rest tends to remain at rest unless a force is exerted on it.” People are also subject to inertia, such that you will stay in your current state of performance and productivity unless some force—a change— is exerted on you.

Needs For the Prime Business Challenge

To meet the Prime Business Challenge, you must understand and fully develop every area that impacts your work performance.

Knowledge. From education and experience, you will gain an understanding of all of the relevant knowledge areas in your work. Typical business knowledge areas include finance, products, services, sales, marketing, and competitors.

Skill sets. Regardless of your specific professional focus, it’s likely that you need some combination of goal setting, preparation, time management, organizational skills, communication, and teamwork.

Psychology. Spectacular success in business begins and ends inside your head. Developing mental areas, such as motivation, confidence, focus, and emotions, are essential for maximizing your performance and productivity.

Support. Success in the business world rarely comes without help. Important support areas include collegial relationships, mentoring, coaching, training, encouragement, problem solving, and feedback.

Meet the Prime Business Challenge

Meeting the Prime Business Challenge is a deliberate process that involves understanding what you need to do to take your performances to the next level and then taking active steps to get there.

Be “unreasonable.” To achieve spectacular success, you have to be a little unreasonable, which means setting expectations and goals that are a bit out of reach.

Understand what you are selling. What—or who—you are selling is yourself! To best position yourself for spectacular success, know what your capabilities are and what added value you bring to your work.
Understand your competitors. If you’re in a competitive marketplace—and who isn’t!—then you need to know your competitors, their knowledge, skill sets, and capabilities. With this data, you can develop strategies to set yourself apart from them.

Identify obstacles. If, despite what appear to be your best efforts, you are not achieving your goals, you need to understand why. By identifying the obstacles that are holding you back, you can remove them to clear your path to spectacular success.

Best practices. The best way to achieve spectacular success is to study and emulate those who have already attained such a lofty level. Just like young athletes studying elite athletes, you can identify the best people in your line of work, study what has made them successful, and develop those areas in yourself.

“Gotta want it bad!” Of all the qualities I have seen in the many top performers with whom I have worked over the past 23 years in business, sports, medicine, and performing arts, the one absolutely essential attribute was an attitude in which they wanted it more than anyone else and they were willing to do anything necessary to achieve their goals.