Business Agility depends upon cool, decisive thinking.
This, in turn, leads to quicker, more effective action, even if it turns out to be wrong. What is the biggest impediment and destroyer of this important foundation to Business Agility? FEAR and uncertainty. In challenging times like these, it is easy to get swept away in fear, worry and anxiety. What if anything can we do about it?
"…destroy the village in order to save it"
This famous quote from the Vietnam War clearly shows the cruel absurdity that can occur when fear takes over. Whether you are a high-ranking leader, decision maker or just a worried parent, fear and anxiety can push you to take misguided actions leading to devastating results.
Right now, the village in question may be your personal part of the world’s economic system. With half the world’s population in lockdown, with constant and frightening news stories about how bad things are, people have both voluntarily and been forced to close their wallets. This is an unprecedented threat to many organizations, both small and large. If you are in charge of one of them you absolutely have every reason to be scared. Yet, as W. Erhard once famously said, “Being reasonable leaves you with reasons, not results”. To make it through this crisis you need results. This means transforming your fears into actionable and measurable results.
"Fear is excitement out of present time". Patrick Collard
What I believe my dear, departed friend meant was that with both fear and excitement you experience the same bodily sensations. Whether riding a roller-coaster or facing bankruptcy, we humans normally experience one or more of the following signs of an adrenaline rush:
· shortness of breath
· faster heartbeat
· sweaty palms
· increased tension
Yet what differentiates a healthy feeling of excitement and exhilaration from fear, worry and anxiety is how present you currently are. Fear takes you out of the reality of here and now by forcing you into your head and its deepest and most worrisome thoughts. You separate from the reality in front of you and begin remembering, comparing, reasoning, analysing, justifying and creating worst case scenarios. In the process you lose all connection with the present.
Whereas, when you feel excited, the feeling in your body is the same, but without the mental thoughts and worry. You are more grounded, connected, clear-headed and ready to dance with what is happening in front of you, here and now. To put it another way, “The mind separates and the heart unites”.
The Trick? Transforming fear to excitement
The key to this transformation is a two-step process that is often too simple for complicated minds. First, instead of deeper thinking, your focus needs to be on what you are feeling. If feeling present is the tool to calm your fears, then when is the only time you can feel something?
Put another way:
· When do you feel something that happened yesterday?
For instance, you may remember having felt something uncomfortable at a critical management meeting yesterday, but aren’t your feelings about yesterday’s meeting actually occurring here and now?
· When do you feel something that may happen tomorrow?
You may sense a strong premonition of tomorrow’s big, exciting sales meeting or the fear of not being able to pay some bills which must settle tomorrow, but when do you actually experience these feelings?
The only time you can ever feel something is here and now, in present time!
Thus, the more you dare to practice feeling those, butterflies in your stomach, that pain in your lower back, that anxious, tight feeling in your chest, congratulations, the more present you currently are! A quick check to see that this simple tool is working is to note when your fears, worries or anxieties return. Are they in the form of fearful thoughts first, followed by feelings of those fears? If so, take a deep breath, then refocus on feelings your body is experiencing and try to objectively sense and define them. This process will force you out of your head’s darkest thoughts and back into the glorious presence of your body, its sensations and its current surroundings. Then you can dance!
Amplifying Presence
Step Two is improving your ability to feel. Again, if sensing what is happening in your body is the key to pull you back into the present, how can you consciously amplify this process?
The easiest way to do this is through slow, conscious and deliberate breathing. The deeper and more aware you become of where your breath easily flows within your body, the more relaxed and calm you will feel. The more relaxed you become the easier it is to feel more and thus become even more present. In this softer state you also become much more open and receptive to new information as well as new possible solutions. In this relaxed and present atmosphere, do you think you have more ability and agility to calmly and consciously respond to the challenges you are facing? Can this state increase your chances for success?
Conclusion: Feel, breathe, decide, act.
Don’t believe anything written above! That is until you consciously and deliberately try it yourself. A while back and like a fish out of water, I realised I had lived in constant fear for most of my life. It took me a long while to admit it and then to even consider that there was another way. I took this to the (ridiculous) point that when I began to lose my fears, I would get scared that there was something wrong. I feared I was guilty of missing something and that stressed me too. Finally, after years of training to feel first, then breathe lots, calmly reflect, decide, respond and finally act, I am currently experiencing very little fear, anxiety or worry regarding our latest and most severe collective crisis. A pleasant and appreciated surprise!
It is my sincere hope that these simple tips above will help you focus more on taking responsible, agile decisions and actions and then enjoying the profitable results they produce. Here’s to mastering business agility and conquering our fears!
--
Welcome to the path of mastering business agility. For more information on simple, powerful and proven business agility tools to improve with please contact me below or read more about what we do here.
Or we invite you to order one of our books:
Called Mastering Agility, Successfully Navigating Uncertainty!
Read more about it and order it here!
Board Member Catalyst Acquisition Group, Minerva Group
Kurt Larsson is an American who has been living in Sweden since the late 1980s. With a background and degree in Finance, he has sold everything from Automobile tires in Houston, Texas to retail banking delivery systems in over 20 countries. He has driven his own educational consulting company, Expanding Understanding, for more than 20 years. His niche is transforming consultative business teams into collaborative ones.
To do this he specializes in effective selling, leadership and customer service practices, focused on more conscious and efficient use of the most important communication tool we have, our body language. His skills work perfectly in line with transforming management, sales and customer service teams from a transactional to a collaborative business model where customer loyalty is the prime goal. He has now become an active member on both Catalyst Acquisition and Minerva Groups’s Board of directors. He has written many articles on Ezine, his own blog and is also co-author with Hans Amell of the book: