Just Seven Things

NLP and Company Growth Enhancement

Read another great review in the FT of a book that’s now on the list. Stall Points. Most Companies Stop Growing – Yours Doesn’t Have To by Matthew Olsen and Derek van Bever.

Apparently it’s about learning from the mistakes some of the biggest companies made: Daimler-Benz, IBM, Toshiba, Levi Strauss that lead to their revenues to stall.

As well as four main reasons driving more than half the growth failures:

‘“premium position captivity” – the failure to change tactics in response to the advent of a low-cost competitor or changing customer preference; “innovation management breakdown” – failure to achieve desired or required returns on investments in new products or services; “premature core abandonment” – failure to exploit growth opportunities in the “core franchise” or to adjust the business model to meet new competitive requirements; and “talent bench shortfall” – lack of adequate leaders and staff with the skills and capabilities for successful strategy execution.’ – FT,

the authors apparently identify ‘stale thinking, based on “mental models” that no longer apply. Abandoning long-held beliefs, resisting the seductive perils of denial, proves difficult for many business leaders’

I was running one of our Ideas and Learning Project courses at Madgex today… It was the second stage of a course I’m running on NLP and Hypnosis. What’s really interesting is when you look at the power of belief and value systems for business people in filtering the realities of the industry (and world) in which they operate.

Not only do successful business people and leaders have strong value and belief systems (that in a lot of cases have probably driven them to the successful leadership positions that they hold). They are also often looked on in light of ‘the myth of the lonely leader, struggling single-handedly to drive the business on’. This can perpetuate belief systems, sometimes in a limiting way. Unless they have the leadership team, board, mentors or wider team (in an articulate and confident staff) to challenge and agitate the current ways of doing things, innovation and creativity just become words on a CEO accountability checklist.

Without this, not only do leaders run the risk of the ‘stale thinking, based on “mental models” that no longer apply’. They run the risk of creating a belief ‘furrow’ perpetuated by themselves and their minions who fawn and defer rather than articulate the challenging questions before consumers exact their punishment.