How Do You Know if Fear is Driving Your Business Decisions?

Business is a mental sport. Many business issues arise from a culture of fear that pervades the organisation. On the surface, you may think you have a business problem... but if you dig deeper, you may find you've got a culture or mindset problem.

Korean Air 801 crashed in Guam in August 1997. Recordings showed they knew they were in trouble. The crew tried to tell the pilots, but the pilots ignored them. The crew, more junior and younger, did not dare to tell the pilots that they were wrong. This is the Korean culture of leadership. Age and seniority were honoured. And leaders were authoritative. This culture led to the death of 228 passengers. 

On the surface, this incident was an example of a safety problem in a company. But is this a result of incompetent pilots? Miscommunication in the cockpit? That's only the surface. Perhaps the real reason is the authoritarian leadership style which created a culture of fear that made junior crew members afraid to disagree with senior pilots.

The way Korean Air turned itself around was admirable. They stepped out of their Fear Zone, the fear of admitting their mistakes, asking for help, dealing with foreigners, and changing their leadership style. They left all that, and hired foreign safety specialists, insisted pilots to be proficient in English, changed the decision-making in the cockpit from one leader to pairs of leaders. Years later, Korean Air had achieved International Standards of Safety. They identified the organisational fear, confronted it, made changes, and saved their reputation.

Your business issues may not lead to a plane crash, but it's just as important. Here are some other more common business issues that are caused by fear:

• The business that loses profits each year because they’re afraid to increase their price.
• The sales team who has low conversion rate because they are too afraid to close during a sales meeting.
• The leader who is wasting money keeping underperformers, because he is too afraid to fire them.
• The customer complaint that took too long to solve because two departments are afraid to talk face to face, and instead communicates through long political emails.
• The employee that doesn’t report a corporate crime to her boss, because she is afraid of being alienated by her colleagues.
• A business owner who cannot have life balance, because she is afraid to trust her team.
• The employee who never actualises her entrepreneurial dream because she’s afraid of failure and uncertainty.
• The leader that is afraid to advance his career because he wonders if he’s good enough.

People think business is a logical game. For too long, the world of business improvement deals with revising strategies, making plans, writing systems. But we know it's more than that. I think business is mostly a mental sport. The best strategies in the world will not be properly executed if the people are living in the Fear Zone. In fact, coming into a problem with fear can lead you to ask the wrong questions that lead to the wrong strategies. That's why, after several years in the business coaching field, I decided to specialise to guide people take people into their Brave Zone, rather than only equipping them with business strategies. Since then, I see greater success in clients.

Starting today, I want you to catch yourself when you're operating from the Fear Zone.

You may be in the Fear Zone if:

1. Your strategic questions is geared only to defend yourself, your brand, and your market share... instead of serving your clients and adding value to the market. I'll illustrate with a story. Facing digitalisation, Kodak was afraid of losing their film business. They asked the question, "How can we not lose our film business?" and decided to delay the launch of their digital camera. Canon & Sony, on the other hand, asked, "What business are we in?" and concluded that they were in the business of story telling and the digital camera will revolutionise the way people tell stories. By the time Kodak launched their version, it was too late. Thanks to the Fear Zone, Kodak is "playing not to lose" instead of "playing to win." They are on defense mode, trying to protect the old market share, instead on offense mode... trying to leverage an advancement in technology. Their questions is geared only to serve themselves. How can we safe our film business? Did they care that the market wanted better story-telling technology? They invented the first digital camera but kept it from the market to protect their film business. Here's a general rule: Money flows to you if you give value. When you stop giving value, money stops flowing. Trying to change that rule goes against the law of business. Serve the market and you will always come on top.
2. You can only see the problem and not the opportunity. Everything that looks like a problem gives birth to an opportunity. I'm going to take a drastic example just to prove the point. Sorry if this offends you. War is a terrible thing. But it is an opportunity if you are in the weapons business, medical business, or in the construction industry. There is a huge boom in those industries during and after the war. What looks like a huge problem can also be seen as an opportunity. My client (let's call him Mike) distributed digital cameras back in the early 2000's. He had an exclusive agreement with his principal. After a few years of success, his principal got greedy and opened the market to other distributors. Mike was heartbroken. He thought he had lost his business. He couldn't see the opportunity in it, until I asked him, "What business are you in?" He answered, "I'm in the digital camera business." "Wrong," I said, "You are a distributor. Camera is your product, not your business. Your business is building trust. Your resellers love and trust you. You can sell them anything and they'll buy from you." He went on to bring in other camera brands, gadgets, and eventually landed a huge opportunity distributing LED lights. He is now enjoying a much more profitable business because he allowed himself to see the opportunity, not only the problem. In the Fear Zone, everything looks bleak... it feels like the world is falling down. If you can calm yourself down and step into your Brave Zone, you will find that behind every problem lies an opportunity.
3. You are justifying an action that has been proven not to work. The Fear Zone has a permanent resident called The Ego. It has built a big mansion in the Fear Zone and is very familiar with everyone that lives in the area. In fact, the Ego has probably been to every house in the Fear Zone, including yours. The Ego's job is to protect the old you even if you know you're wrong. It serves to make you feel defensive, to make you sensitive to criticism, to make you think illogically. It blinds you from what you know is right. It makes you afraid of doing what you know you should do. My client (let's call her Sarah) was 55 years old when I met her. For 15 years, she had built her company and now she feels it's getting stagnant. Sarah is a nice person. That's what made her be nice to everyone, every customer, every staff member. In fact, she's so nice that she never reminded her clients that their payments were late.... and had not increased the price in 7 years. And as for her team, she never monitored them or demanded reports from them. So for the most part, she was clueless as to what was actually happening in her business. Over time, Sarah felt frustrated. She was in the Fear Zone. She was experienced enough to know what to do, but why didn't she? Because the Fear of Being Disliked had locked up her brain. Price increase and monitoring payment are not complicated strategies; not rocket science. But her fear was bigger than her logic. Her fear made her justify her overly kind behaviour, even when it was no longer useful. At the beginning of our engagement, she defended her need to be nice by using a universal philosophy that people have to be nice to others. Wow! Profound. But after some digging she realised that her Ego (Ego is spelled F-E-A-R) was defending her behaviour and it was time to change. By the way, she's made a lot of changes including 3 price increases within the 12 months we worked together... and all her customers stayed. She doubled her revenue and increased her cash... and for the first time in 15 years, she took a 2-week vacation with her family.

A company is just a group of people working together towards a common goal guided by a common culture. And when the leader allows their fears to shape the culture, you can expect business problems to arise.

Think of your biggest challenge in your business or your leadership right now. What fear is behind that?

Sure, not all business issues are caused by fear... but a whole lot of them are, so give it a try.

Message me if you want a different perspective on your strengths, your blindspots, and your growth potential.

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