‘Faith is spelt r-i-s-k’ is an expression you may have heard before, but probably not in the context of business. So, you ask, what has faith got to do with business?
Leaders require faith in their businesses, most importantly in their culture, if they are ever going to lead change in their marketplace.
By leading change, I mean competing and winning in their chosen marketplace by embracing change to always move ahead of competitors and deliver more customer value than anyone else. As I discussed in a recent blog, it will involve disruption, innovation, new business models and all the things that allow businesses to continually move forward.
Do You Have Faith?
Have you ever asked yourself and your leadership team the question: do you have faith in the business?
Faith is normally related to religious beliefs but it also represents a trust, a loyalty, an allegiance to duty or a person, and strong belief or conviction in something or someone. As a leader do you have a faith in your business, your fellow leaders, your staff, your systems and processes, your reward structure and, most importantly, your culture? Culture is the personality, traits, values, and belief systems of your business, and therefore influences most other things within it.
Why is faith important in business?
Because without faith you will be unable to take the courageous steps forward that are required to lead your market. To stare failure in the eye and to say, ‘Let’s give it a go’.
Wisdom, courage, sincerity, humanity, and discipline are cornerstone leadership traits of worthy leaders (Learn more about this in my free download Leadership Talk: Great Leaders Building Great Businesses). Does your leadership team have what it takes?
Leader or Follower?
As a business, are you a leader or follower in your marketplace? A follower is probably better expressed as someone playing catch up to their competitors. To be a leader you will need to have a culture of embracing change and trying new things. Which means your business will need a healthy attitude towards failure.
Failure is often spelt ‘your fault’ in many businesses and therefore becomes an anti-change agent. It is often swept under the carpet or passed around when it occurs. It is the source of fear – real fear – but worthy leaders should not fear failure.
As a leader in your business have you ever discussed its culture towards failure?
A recent article in Strategy and Leadership by writer Michelle Celarier titled ‘Reframing Failure’, explores leadership and failure. Celarier writes: “Despite the lip service that some companies pay to creating a safe environment for failure in order to nurture innovation, that clear line of thinking that divides success stories from failure follows most of us all the way up to the C-suite.”
This is further supported in the article by those Celarier spoke with, including Carol Seymour, founder of Signature Leaders, who says: “The fear of failure, and the accompanying retribution, leads many executives to play it safe,” and executive coach Kristi Hedges, who notes: “In reality most organisations don’t value [failure]. People don’t get paid to fail. In fact, failure is severely punished.”
No One Owns Failure
And while we recognise that failure can deliver valuable learnings, we prefer that it is on someone else’s business or watch. Even more, I believe there is often a stigma that is carried around by those who have failed. So, back to the question, how do you and those in your business view failure? And what is the mind-set that you should build in your business towards failure, which may strengthen rather than weaken its competitiveness?
I find that material losses are incurred by businesses when pursuing opportunities not because of the decision to invest but rather because of the blame culture that exists. This culture leads to a lack of oversight and accountability; when things go bad, everyone walks away. Everyone wants to be associated with the successful project and no one had anything to do with the failure.
The following extract from Achieve – Creating A Life Of Enduring Success, may assist in reframing the way your business should view failure:
‘To be successful you must learn to fail. Failing is not a bad thing – it is an essential ingredient of being successful. Failure is just about trial and error until you hit upon the right formula for your success. Failure is about learning where your strengths lie and where your weaknesses exist. You will be unable to play to your strengths unless you have experienced failure in many areas of your life.’
Creating Faith
In a business context, you need your team to be stepping forward and exploring, and trying what is possible in growing your business and its competitive strength.
You need them to be excited about what is possible and drawing upon every ounce of their creative capability, as individuals and as team members. You need to create a safe environment, clear processes and a reward structure to guide them. It is through this approach that you will encourage disruption, innovation and pure and simple business growth. It will also provide a guided investment environment for supporting these possibilities with clear accountability and checkpoints.
Do you have faith your business’s culture and processes support active risk taking? Does everyone in your business have faith in leadership’s attitude toward their efforts and any failure that may follow?
Active Knowledge Questions:
- Do you have faith in your business to take the risks necessary to remain competitive?
- How would you describe your leadership team’s attitude toward failure?
- What needs to change?
Act Now:
Need to lift the leadership performance in your business? C88 – Leadership Performance Guide and Journal will provide each leader within your business with a personal roadmap to follow.
And do you need to encourage anyone on your team to step forward, take risk and chase success? Achieve – Creating A Life of Enduring Success is the resource you should provide them with.
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All the best in the success of your business,
Richard Shrapnel
