Small business start-ups and quick results: Part 2

In part one of this article series, we discussed three primary drivers of the search for quick results in small business start-ups: unrealistic expectations about personal prospects, achievement orientation style, and fear. In this article we’re going to examine some of the strategies you can use to counter these psychological drivers.

Unrealistic Expectations

The medicine here is not pleasant, I’m afraid. In fact, it’s reminiscent of the nasty potions we used to have to swallow when we were sick as children. But please bear with me because we’re getting the worst out in the open quickly so that we can move on to the more palatable strategies which will follow.

Now that you’re braced for the worst, the bottom line is this: Anything that can happen to someone else’s business can also happen to yours. There’s no mitigating factor that will completely insure you against real world circumstances. You do yourself a great disservice if you persuade yourself otherwise. Believing that you’re immune from harsh realities is emotionally reassuring in the short-term. That’s why people do it. It alleviates anxiety. But it’s potentially devastating in the long-term because it robs you of the capacity to take the steps that would genuinely protect you against the outcomes you fear.

When you look reality squarely in the eye, you can work out exactly what you need to do to avoid unwelcome outcomes. Realistic expectations therefore work for you because they facilitate preventative action.

Realistic expectations do even more than that. They also provide the pathway out of the anxiety you’re trying to avoid in the first place. Once you’ve bravely considered the worst possible scenario, you can create a business plan for how you would manage it. Once you have a solid business plan to deal with that outcome, there’s no longer any need to fear it. You know exactly how you would respond if the situation was ever to arise, so there’s no further need to prop yourself up with unrealistic thinking. You’ve solved the problem rather than just pretending it doesn’t exist.

Achievement Orientation Style

There’s no “right” and “wrong” when we’re talking about orientation styles, or any other psychological characteristic for that matter. At the same time, some psychological characteristics lead to greater success and happiness than others.

It turns out that an ego orientation style is generally associated with lower personal happiness and less success compared to a mastery orientation style. This might surprise you, especially if you feel that you’re someone who “thrives on competition”. But trying to outperform others is a form of social comparison – how good am I compared to someone else? – and comparing yourself to others is not the most life-enhancing strategy available to you. When you compare yourself to others, you lose control of your self-esteem and happiness. If you outperform someone else you feel happy and good about yourself. If they outperform you, you feel bad about yourself and miserable. Your feelings about yourself therefore vary depending upon the behaviour and fortunes of other people. If you’re by nature a competitive person, focus on competing against yourself. Strive for “personal bests”. This keeps you mentally focussed on your own behaviour and development – and these are the things that make the difference to your outcomes.

There’s a dense body of research demonstrating that people with a mastery orientation consistently outperform people with an ego orientation. This is, at least partially, because mastery oriented people invest all their time and energy in developing their own strengths, rather than worrying about what the competition is doing.

It’s also because people with a mastery orientation have the source of their happiness and self-esteem completely under their own control. Success for mastery oriented people is about learning, improvement, skill building, and delivering personal best achievements – all of which are achievable independent of the behaviour of others. Developing competence and achieving mastery build solid, appropriate self-confidence. And appropriately high self-confidence is a core driver of success.

My final point on motivational orientation is that it’s not a fixed personal characteristic. You can change your orientation from one style to the other. You have enormous power to influence your own well being and outcomes.

Fear

Unfortunately, I can’t give you the heavy duty ways of dealing with fear here because they need to be worked through in a more personal forum. But I can provide a powerful strategy that will help.

In psychology we make a distinction between a results focus and a process focus. People who are “results-focussed” constantly scrutinize their results in a bid to evaluate their progress and level of accomplishment. In contrast, people who are “process-focussed” focus their energies intensely on the processes they need to master, because they understand that if they get the processes right, the results will follow.

Results are an effect, not a cause. Focussing your attention on causes rather than effects therefore makes a lot of sense.

In addition, a process focus has powerful psychological benefits, particularly in alleviating anxiety. Results will never be completely under your control. There are always external factors that can influence your outcomes. But processes are under your complete control. Processes are where you have real leverage.

A process focus increases your probability of success (because it increases the quality of your service delivery), and alleviates anxiety at the same time – a genuine “two for the price of one” offer!