Being Wise or Being a Genius

Being a Father of three superstar sons aged 19, 12 and 4 years old, Yep they are quite spread out. The spreading out has been a great opportunity to really enjoy them rather than having 3 close together who compete for your attention and kill each other without respite.

What amazes me is the amount you forget as you consume life's experiences rather than being "present" and in a place to take stock and enjoy the ride in the moment. 

This also applies to people and their careers. It was not long ago that I was on several stages collecting awards for business start-up, rapid growth and business innovation. 

My point is that when I was receiving the Business Start-Up Award from Professor Dylan Jones-Evans the guest speaker was Steve Morgan, founder of Redrow and now Chairman of Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club, shared a notion of "remembering to smell the roses on the journey to success". This I did not do when building the invincible business from my garden shed to a national market leader that was destined to crash further down the line after $60,000,000  (£40,000,000) of sales.

This was a powerful insight that were just words with some reasoning wrapped up in them. Made sense, however, like everyone else does when receiving advice or guidance, I did not have the meanings "land" or was able to internalize the wisdom. Truth is, I did not know to consciously make an effort back then to understand and soak-up the sharing from wise heads.

 Hey, me and the team that I was building around me as fast as Mc Donald's make a Big Mac, we were too busy. Chaos can be like a drug. The drama, the drive and the dusting yourself down and getting back on the bike was energising and fun. Success breeds success. However, success in one area can seriously mask problems in another area. There are blindspots that can creep up and pinch the wheels from underneath you even when you are travelling at 90 mph.

Without going in to all the how's, why's and should have's there are things that people who run businesses need to know and fully internalize when they run a business. Not knowing these simple things and having these simple structures are the reasons why so many businesses fail. I learned this the hard way. I also learned that many people in the business support sector do not have the necessary general skills to assist business owners and their management teams.

My first mentor was a business turnaround specialist, as well as a mentor. I learned loads from Phil Wildbur. The cash-flow management tool that Phil first help my team install in our business is very similar to the one that I use with my clients today, plus a few improvements. 

If you ain't got financial control and you as a business owner does not know how it all hangs together, preferring to allow "others" to control blindly, expect a disaster or a deception to hit your business at some point. 

Complete This Sentence:

"My business has financial control because....

This should only take a minute or two do... Go on, complete the above question before reading on....

If you have not been able to say things like:-

1. We have the the right financial software in place.
2. We have live systems that tells us exactly where we are at any given time.
3. We reconcile the bank account with our accounts every morning.
4. We have a cash-flow which we update daily and know what monies are going in and out of our business today, tomorrow and over the next 2 months or so.
5. I can control the cash-flow and go into our systems and walk through the processes in my business from start to finish.

Let's go back to the start of this message and my 3 kids and the opening quote. I encourage my kids to experiment and try things. Have fun learning and fun failing forward. I remind them "You will never get everything 'right' all of the time if you are trying hard enough". But I also get them to be listening closely to what experience success creators share and listen behind the words. Seek out the meanings of the person sharing and clarify the intended wisdom. Then seek to anchor it within themselves. 

The reason I am insistent on this is that we as humans have a habit of being hell bent on making our own mistakes. I see it in my kids who want the fun whilst ignoring my safety instructions, like, "stay away from the puddle when the bus goes past". Adults are not too different, we know everything whilst knowing nothing. People simply do't know what they don't know and their limited view of things allow blindspots to join forces, multiply and thrive in the ignorance of the currently "successful". Yep you guessed it. I have been that idiot too.... and yep, it was painful. I'd much rather be a genius instead of a wise person, as the quote of Nilda Gonzalez says "A wise person learns from their own mistakes. A genius learns from the mistakes of others".

What ZONEtransform seeks to do, is help businesses and their management teams to have a solid foundation to build from. Then assist in creating a dynamic culture that helps businesses perform at their optimum performance levels where achieving exceptional results is normal and expected. If this resonates with you a bit, or if you are curious to find out a little bit more, visit http://www.ZONEtransform.com and go to the contact page and request a call back or some more information.