JoAnn Corley — October 24, 2019 One of the elements of business I’m becoming more and more committed to – for myself and clients – is that of simplicity.
I’m also devoted to spend my time providing insights and information from a different point of view that provides meaningful value…that is if you spend your precious time reading my blog…at the end of each post you’ll think, “Well, that was worth it.”
From my experience, that different point of view is seeing business through a very simple lens. Here’s the lens: all things business are derived from human behavior. It has become a very defined view over the years and its benefits are enormous for this who are willing to see as I do.
2 Simple Principles of Business You Should Know
After working with thousands of employees and their managers throughout North American over those past years, I’ve observed and have narrowed down the main, overriding issues to success in business and they are human behavior and relationships… and note how one naturally impacts the other in business outcomes. (I’ll address relationships in my next post. For the moment, we’ll focus on human behavior.)
What if you planned and ran your business with an emphasis on this lens – being aware of human behavior in every decision – what would happen? Here’s the funny thing – in some respects you probably already do, you just may not recognize it.
Ultimately, everything….that is everything (and yes I’m repeating myself to make a point) comes down to human behavior and what influences it:
1. what we know – knowledge – what we know and don’t know
2. what we do with what we know aka what we decide
3. how we emotionally react to what we experience
4. how we interpret our experience – what we tell ourselves about what’s happening (whether rational or not, true or not).
5. how we relate to employees, customers, service partners, stockholders (all stakeholders depending on your business design).
All of these will dictate how money flows in and out of our business. If your money flow is not happening the way you want, if you’re not achieving the results you’re working so hard to get, I’m 99.9% sure it can be found in one of these 5.
So, what does this mean for you as a business owner, senior leader or HR professional? If you don’t add human behavior to your lens as you look at your business, you will probably miss some critical stuff….and it will be difficult to adequately diagnosis issues so that you can find the appropriate solutions. You will be throwing money at things that won’t give you the resolution you need.
This is why I recommend that every business owner has a behavior specialist on their advisory team. Some think that’s their human resource partner, but unfortunately, it’s rare to find one that has the needed level of combined business and human behavior acumen.
Here’s A Fun, Fast Activity
A quick and easy way to start improving your view is to do the following simple exercise:
1. Write down – free flow – everything that is bugging you about your business.
2. Write down a list of things that are going right in your business.
3. Now for each item written, apply any elements of the 1-5 list above.
You should begin to see how behavior – how we operate as humans – generates the results in your business.
One final thought: When it comes to hiring someone at any level, consider not only what they “can do” but how they relate to others while doing it. One definitely impacts the efficiency and effectiveness of the other. What’s the usefulness of needed skills if they adversely impact the ability of others to fully execute theirs.
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