Business Growth – Are You Looking To The Future?

As your competitors panic now's the perfect time to look at business growth.
Picture of Phil Newton

Phil Newton

Managing Director
business growth blog skills shop

Today I read an article on the Good News network explaining how the Himalayan mountains were visible from India…  the first time in 30 years and this got me thinking about business growth.

What have the Himalayans got to do with business growth?

Can you imagine driving down the road and checking out the rear-view mirror and suddenly seeing those peaks?

The Himalayan mountains reminded me of running a business.  Business is a series of peaks and troughs.  

It’s important to recognise the troughs but then quickly accelerate to the your peak in terms of performance and business growth.

When you’re performing at your most efficient everything is effortless and falls into place.  You can thank you brain for that!

Set your RAS

The reticular activating system (RAS) is a network of neurons located in the brain stem.  One function of the RAS is finding social proof to back up your thoughts and what’s important to you.

Do you have an employee who’s always always late or is never good with money? 

Imagine if they reframed their thoughts to an abundance mindset so they were always on time and money had no limits…

What impact would this have on your business growth?

Skills Shop teaches setting your RAS on our online conflict management course as it gets you to focus on the positive result you want and not on the disagreement.

One way to instil this into your staff is to use the feed forward technique.

It’s time to feed forward

Let’s use the analogy of driving to explain this.

Glancing in the rear-view mirror:

  • Reminds you of past experiences which will shape your future.
  • Guarantees no hidden surprises as you concentrate on the road ahead.
  • It keeps you grounded and makes sure you’re still on the right road.

So if you want to accelerate your business growth involve your network.

My networks consists of staff, business associates, BNI, social media, friends and family.  All these play a pivotal role and here’s how.

Whenever I’m stuck I pose a question.

This might be…

“If you were dealing with ‘x’ what would you do”.

All you’re allowed to do is listen and say “thank you”.

Nothing else.

Once you’ve gotten some responses you then take this information to work out what you’re going to do.

So by setting your RAS to feed forward you will not be stuck with the problem but instead find the solution.

There is one caveat to this.

You need to ask the right question.

I taught this technique to some primary school children and one student asked me:

“How can I improve my cricket game”

My response:

“Don’t take a baseball bat to a cricket match”.

Looking forwards, I can’t wait to drive closer to that next peak.

How about you?

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