The Mindset of Binary Thinking

If you are a service provider, it's vital that you identify and understand your mindsets because of the nature of your business. When you are selling your expertise, your “factory floor” is between your ears. Consequently, your mindsets, positive or negative, factor into every aspect of your business, whether it’s how you position your service offerings, identify and engage with prospects, conduct sales conversations, complete engagements, or price your services.

In my book, The Generosity Mindset, I identified five different mindsets that inhibit a service provider from attracting their best-fit clients at better pricing. Those five mindsets are:

--The Mindset of Inadequacy (“I’m not good enough.”)

--The Mindset of an Imposter (“I’m a fraud”)

--The Mindset of Comparison (“I’m not as good as . . .”)

--The Mindset of Helping (“I want to help everyone.”)

--The Mindset of Scarcity (“It’s either me or you.”)

These mindsets are the most common ones I’ve run into in my work with service providers, which is why, of course, I included them in my book and explained how The Generosity Mindset? can be employed to counter each one successfully.

These five mindsets weren’t meant to be exhaustive; they’re just the most common ones, in my experience, that directly affect a service provider’s business.

Another one I see, and in one particular area that is having a major impact on professional service providers, is the mindset of binary thinking.

The Mindset of Binary Thinking and the Problems It Creates

The mindset of binary thinking is black-or-white, good or bad thinking. It reduces complex people, problems, situations, and situations to stark either/or.

At its worst, it’s the feeling that “I’m right and you’re wrong.”

The mindset of binary thinking encourages us to make quick judgments, and this mindset is baked into our DNA. It springs from the “fight or flight” tendency that all of us have, one that helped our ancestors quickly identify dangers to their survival. We use this same tendency in our daily lives today to avoid potentially injurious or lethal situations.

The problem comes when we bring the mindset of binary thinking to our business. (It’s a problem for other areas of our lives, too, but that’s another post.) Either/or thinking encourages us to quickly judge whether a prospect is a great fit or not, or whether a particular course of action for a client is either good or bad.

In truth, human beings are complicated, and the problems they are dealing with in their business have many different facets.

While it’s helpful to draw comparisons between current clients and others you have worked with in the past, or to see the similarities between a client’s situation and other engagements you’ve been involved in, those comparisons only go so far.

The mindset of binary thinking can tempt services providers to make judgements of clients that don’t reflect all sides of that client. It can also limit your potential to offer nuanced solutions to complex, dynamic problems.

Where The Mindset of Binary Thinking is Showing Up Right Now

One particular area where I see the mindset of binary thinking right now is in artificial intelligence and how AI is applied in the world of professional services.

The myriad of AI-based tools and the efficiencies they create has generated significant optimism and adaptation for some professionals. Some service providers seem so giddy in their enthusiasm for AI and its possibilities that I wonder if they have time for anything else.

Then there are the naysayers, some of whom come across as curmudgeons. Because of the drawbacks of AI, and, frankly, how threatening it could be to the business models of many service providers, it’s easy to see why there are some who seem critical of anything that “smells” of AI.

AI is like any other innovation we’ve adapted to in our businesses: it is creating enormous possibilities, yet there are drawbacks and externalities you have to take into account. One of the most commonly identified problems is the generation of copy that is so generic and plain vanilla that it is devoid of personality.

This is why AI can be extremely useful in the research you do for a blog post, an article, or a book, yet at the same time, it is quite risky to your reputation and your brand to use it to compose "your" words.

It's why you can accept some of the changes that your grammar app suggests, such as spelling, but not every single one, because one of those rewrite suggestions, for example, would completely change the meaning of your sentence.

There's no one right answer for how you ought to view AI or implement its use in your business. There's a ton of nuance to it.

Using The Generosity Mindset? to Counter Binary Thinking

Essential principles of The Generosity Mindset in interactions with clients include a focus on asking great questions. practicing effective listening skills to absorb not only what's said but the signals others send, and being open to the needs and hopes of others.

These same principles can be applied to counter the problems that come from binary thinking.

To summarize in two words: be curious.

Resist the tendency to turn that flesh-and-blood person into a cartoon character or an avatar. Take advantage of the fact that, as a B2B professional services provider with a high average sales ticket, you don't need to reduce all your clients to personas and sort them accordingly, like B2C companies have to do. Check yourself if you have the thought that "she is just like" some other client you've had in the past. Take the time to understand both the richness of variety and the contradictions that others have.

Avoid a rush to judgment on problems and situations. As you find yourself coming to conclusions, ask yourself what you might be missing. What jumps in logic have you made? What experience have you applied to what you're trying to diagnose that really doesn't fit?

It's much easier for me to type these words than for you or I to live them in our daily practice. The lizard side of our brains compels us to make judgments.

The extent to which we can pause and generously allow for different possibilities in people and problems, however, the better we will be as service providers.

#binarythinking #mindsets #ai #entrpreneurship #pricevaluejourney

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Business consultant and coach, author, and podcaster John Ray advises solopreneurs and small professional services firms who sell their expertise on their two most frustrating problems: pricing and business development. John is passionate about how changes in mindset, positioning, and pricing change the trajectory of a business and the lifestyle choices of a business owner. His clients are professionals such as consultants, coaches, attorneys, CPAs, accountants and bookkeepers, marketing professionals, and other professional services practitioners.

John is the author of the national bestselling book, The Generosity Mindset: A Journey to Business Success by Raising Your Confidence, Value, and Prices. The book covers topics like value and adopting a mindset of value, pricing your services more effectively, proposals, and essential elements of growing your business. The book is available at all major physical and online book retailers.