What I want to talk about today is very closely related or actually a component of the flexibility that I talk about being so important in business and that is the idea of making sure that you are not allowing yourself to being married to any particular idea.
What I mean about being married to an idea is when you've allowed your mind to be so asphyxiated on things going a certain way or an idea about your business or a certain aspect about your business that you are not willing to being open to seeing it any differently and often miss the forest for the trees by being unwilling to make changes or being able to view things in a different light.
You want to make sure in your business that you are seeing the business as a tool.
Your business is a vehicle, something that is creating income for you, creating a certain lifestyle for you and your family, creating security for you and your loved ones but it is an extension of you but it is not you.
It should never become synonymous with who you are.
Typically you find those who are married to their business by looking at their businesses in a certain way.
They've allowed their businesses to become so synonymous with who they are that anything or any possible change or suggestion of a change to that business becomes almost like a threat to them and it really causes people to limit their own success.
I've seen businesses go up in flames all the time because people are so unwilling to be more flexible and they're married to looking at their business in a certain way and they don't want to see it any other way.
Because they are unwilling to see it any other way, the way that they are currently operating it, which is not being effective, literally takes them down.
You can have something just as simple as a piece of legislation that sometimes can wipe out a whole business.
You may have to scrap your business and start from scratch and start something completely new because the market changes, what the market wants changes, the way that people are communicating changes.
If you think about companies like newspapers that are in such trouble right now because they've had to really have a tough time with just responding in the new way that people prefer to receive information and want it to be more interactive.
You can think about companies like FedEx and UPS.
You know, most trucking companies are out of business simply because they were really fixed and married to the idea of having to do everything through human labor, but these two companies, because they embrace technology, were able to survive and even thrive into the information age.
So, in your business make sure that no matter what you never are 100% married to any idea within your business.
Keep your plans in sand but keep your goals in stone so that whenever something changes you will be able to make that change and deal with it in a way that moves you forward so that you don't hold yourself back by being so fixed upon the things being a certain way that you actually do yourself and your business a huge disservice.
What I mean about being married to an idea is when you've allowed your mind to be so asphyxiated on things going a certain way or an idea about your business or a certain aspect about your business that you are not willing to being open to seeing it any differently and often miss the forest for the trees by being unwilling to make changes or being able to view things in a different light.
You want to make sure in your business that you are seeing the business as a tool.
Your business is a vehicle, something that is creating income for you, creating a certain lifestyle for you and your family, creating security for you and your loved ones but it is an extension of you but it is not you.
It should never become synonymous with who you are.
Typically you find those who are married to their business by looking at their businesses in a certain way.
They've allowed their businesses to become so synonymous with who they are that anything or any possible change or suggestion of a change to that business becomes almost like a threat to them and it really causes people to limit their own success.
I've seen businesses go up in flames all the time because people are so unwilling to be more flexible and they're married to looking at their business in a certain way and they don't want to see it any other way.
Because they are unwilling to see it any other way, the way that they are currently operating it, which is not being effective, literally takes them down.
You can have something just as simple as a piece of legislation that sometimes can wipe out a whole business.
You may have to scrap your business and start from scratch and start something completely new because the market changes, what the market wants changes, the way that people are communicating changes.
If you think about companies like newspapers that are in such trouble right now because they've had to really have a tough time with just responding in the new way that people prefer to receive information and want it to be more interactive.
You can think about companies like FedEx and UPS.
You know, most trucking companies are out of business simply because they were really fixed and married to the idea of having to do everything through human labor, but these two companies, because they embrace technology, were able to survive and even thrive into the information age.
So, in your business make sure that no matter what you never are 100% married to any idea within your business.
Keep your plans in sand but keep your goals in stone so that whenever something changes you will be able to make that change and deal with it in a way that moves you forward so that you don't hold yourself back by being so fixed upon the things being a certain way that you actually do yourself and your business a huge disservice.
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