Driver 9: Ideology

What is the belief system that you hold, and which drives you? To answer this question is all about making sense of your mindset and figuring out what your ideology is. Now you are a CEO and not an employee or technician, this responsibility falls on your shoulders.

You need to understand how your mindset and the belief system you have within is either helping or hindering your business.

You need to realize that the person setting the limitations on themselves, and the growth potential of the company is you, but that you also have direct control over what you believe and can change it.

It’s hugely important to recognize that you need to read, learn, and connect with books, other people, other businesses to compare and evolve your own ideology. When you do that, you are going to expand your capability and your sense of what is possible.

One example of a common business owner with limited ideology is one that has an employee that is bringing the company down. They might have poor performance, they are regularly late, unreliable, and seem to be sabotaging the business in certain ways. We have met with owners that have felt that they simply do not have any other choice but to keep this sub-standard employee because they do not believe that the business can function without them. They might say something like, “They are driving me crazy, but we need X, otherwise we won’t be able to manage.”

In actual fact the business owner could start posting a job ad, hold a handful of interviews and more likely than not, find a better fit for their company. Whilst this may temporarily put a strain on some parts of the business, but in the long term this will greatly strengthen the company and if the owner has made the right choice about the new hire, it will improve client satisfaction and the business as a whole.

Another example is an experience from Jay Abraham, global business consultant and coach:

“I had a person I worked for one time who had a really limited ideological philosophy. Because he was the owner of the business, he would never pay any salesperson more than he was paid. Well, his growth was forever limited because of that ideology.

I took the opposite ideology to another client. After the changes, the client had five salespeople making four times what my client made. But in doing that my client was able to quadruple his income and they built a business for him that he was able to sell three years later for 25 times more than it was worth than when I met him. It’s all a function of evaluating, altering, and shifting your ideology.”

The owner is not an employee of the company, and the owner must be prepared to work well outside the typical Monday to Friday 9 to 5 box. An owner is seeking everything that the company needs to last and grow into the future. This includes traveling to seminars, conferences, or work sites to learn better ways to grow your business and/or your profits, training your mind, raising your business acumen.

An owner is a social butterfly who has no problem taking on all interactions with the best interests of the company in mind. You are no longer able to decline an event because you do not want to travel, nor do you like that particular trade show. It may be possible to transfer some of these tasks to a trusted manager, but an owner needs to have the pulse of their industry so they can react to changes before they start to trend mainstream. This can only be achieved by being active at all times and seeking all opportunities even if they lead nowhere.

Does the way you think of your company optimize the company or is it just comfortable for you. In a way the company is its own living machine made up of all the people you employ. You work on the company not for it. Your job is to keep the company living and moving forward.