If you want to create a life that is worth recording then you need to stop and pause what you are doing. Don’t make the time to do it, just take it.
You have to rewind to where you started and get back in alignment in order to move forward in confidence. By making short term adjustments, the long term effects can be so, so positive. When you do this, you can fast forward towards a brighter future.
Today, I want to help you to press play with clarity, turn the volume up on your message and bring colour and contrast to your story.
So take control of your life, and read on.
Record.
You are being watched by more people than you actually realise. Some people are willing you to win and wanting to champion your cause. Others (unfortunately) are willing you to fail, to make themselves feel better about why things aren’t working out for them. You need to succeed, for everyone’s benefit, and not because it validates you, but because it inspires others to move from their position. Your very best chance of success is to live out what has been put in your heart to do.
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right,” Henry Ford.
History tells us that anything worth doing takes a certain degree of risk. No risk, no story. Each of us are born to write a story aligning your life to what was put in your heart to do. It’s what I call your heart set.
Stop and Pause.
It’s time to stop, pause and take control of what we are ‘doing’. To ask ourselves if we are ‘living’? It might be a case of looking in the mirror and asking the questions that we have been avoiding. You were not born to just exist, you were born for a purpose and yes, there is more to life than this. Your purpose is your power. You just need to commit to it and make changes now.
I love talking like this!! It’s how we help businesses tell their story. You either had ‘it’ and lost ‘it’, or you never took the time to understand what ‘it’ was. Eventually, just existing will run its course and you come to a dead end. Crisis.
In the midst of crises it’s easier to discover what we really want! When we have discovered it, then we need to be brave enough to make the choices that move us closer towards it. The great thing is, when you are living on purpose you can enjoy the journey more, even if at times things can be difficult. Making short term changes produces some uncomfortable conversations. The key is aligning what’s in your heart with what’s in your mind. Purpose is in the heart, strategy and execution are in the mind, and you have to choose to execute daily. Heartset and mindset work hand in hand, but if you lead with the mind, you’ll execute on lots of things, but never feel rewarded. When you lead with the heart, the reward is executing and knowing that’s the very reason you are alive.
Rewind.
Learning to rewind back to why you started helps with this transition from mindset to heartset. The kind of leaders we need right now are not driven by mindset alone. Mindset is only part of the story. What the world needs right now is more heart, not more strategies. When you lead from the heart, strategy follows.
Too often, running a business leaves the founder being run by the business, when activities that contribute to the success of the business can be done by others within the organisation. The Founder/CEO is at their best when they are committed to delivering on mission and vision and executing on values. Don’t let the business run you, make a choice that you are going to run the business by delegating where necessary. You have to decide not to get distracted.
Rewinding is remembering why we started in the first place. Circumstances have a way of clouding out the conviction with which we started. Going back in time to align with the past changes the present and ensures a better future! Reminds me of Marty McFly and Doc going ‘Back to the Future’!
So, if you set out to change or disrupt an industry, then make sure that’s what you are still doing. Build an R&D arm into your business to remain on mission, deliver against the vision and stay true to your values.
When you bring ‘research and development’ into your business and find someone else to run the day to day operations of the business, you secure its future. This simple tweak to your focus may cause short term challenges BUT in the long term this will allow you to pioneer and ensure you are best placed to deliver. Most founders are pioneers. When they stop pioneering (which they are exceptionally good at) the focus and enjoyment that pushed the organisation forward dries up – and this, in its turn, can affect culture. What attracted people to the company goes missing!
There’s an excitement (that needs to be guarded) attached to the possibility of making an impact. Others can make sure that the great work you started is continued in the present, allowing you to keep pioneering. Logitech put it like this:
Businesses need to build around:
Trees (existing business)
Plants (improvements in current delivery)
Seeds (the future)
The founder needs to play in the ‘seed’ space and attract great team members who ensure the existing business (trees) flourishes. The plant space (current execution) improves with learning and feedback from current projects and industry insights.
Ask any pioneer, they love pioneering. Ask any operations director, they love directing the day to day and refining its operation. Refining and optimising. The two are not the same. The founder needs to be released into building legacy.
Fast Forward.
This ‘futuring’ mentality allows for the founder to see the way forward and to align with the vision that they started out with. If you are 1º out, you could eventually end up miles away from the destination. Pilots understand this and pioneers are rather like pilots. When they set their co-ordinates and travel at 500 miles an hour, one degree in the wrong direction can result in being miles off target.
Founders found. And they find opportunity. They are at their best creating something from nothing. It’s not they are better than anyone else, but their role often gets swallowed up into the day to day. In fact, they should be doing everything they can to continue to find multiple opportunities to ensure the business remains sustainable and relevant to the audience it serves.
Setting up a research and development arm of the business is part of what we call Beyond. Beyond is creating the future by making choices in the short term for the long term benefit of everyone. Blockbuster and Kodak would have benefited greatly if they had doubled down on research and development, or at least led with it. The voice of the pioneer clearly wasn’t audible.
In recent times, Apple had a similar experience and the company almost went bust. Thankfully, they woke up in time and gave the visionary a voice. Steve Jobs, The Founder, came back. The crazy thing was the idea was already there! The iMac was already with Jonny Ive (Product Lead), but someone needed to ‘see the opportunity’. Jonny Ive knew what was needed but he wasn’t given the voice. Then, within a few short months, Apple suspended all the complex products, concentrated all efforts on the iMac and it caught the world’s attention. Then came the iPod, iPhone, iPad, all pushing the business to the trillion dollar organisation it is today.
If you want a great future to accelerate towards, make sure that you as the founder have the space to pioneer. That means the leaders in the team need to be trusted to lead. I believe that the strength of a business, for the long term, is found in its commitment to Research and Development.
When you have clarity on this you can move forward with confidence. Clarity creates currency!
Play.
When we you make space to work in this way, work feels more like play for everyone. Everyone is in the right place. The founder isn’t forever doing tasks that the rest of team are capable to deliver and the rest of the team are secure in knowing that the business has longevity – it’s actually exciting!
Pressing play and enjoying the experience is knowing that everyone is fulfilling their role. Meeting all current needs so that the business has the confidence to scale.
For you the founder too, work feels more like play again. No longer having to deal with endless things that take you further away from why you started, you can refocus. It gets you back to why you started and allows you to double down on falling in love with the problem not the solution. Innovation is now back at the heart fo the business – and it started with you.
Work hard, play harder. When you are doing what you are supposed to do, playing harder as the founder is when you are living the dream and giving others the space to live theirs.
Purpose is more than your passion, it’s your power.
Volume.
When your business is aligned to purpose you can see where you do your best work and it attracts the right people for now and the future. For any pioneer, one of the keys to growth is to be open to ‘talk to strangers’ because it only takes one conversation to take you light years forward. When you are unavailable for opportunity, opportunities dry up.
Having the right people around you will also encourage you to embrace change, and become better than you were yesterday. And, you also need to review who is speaking into your life regularly. Not only ‘yes’ people, but people that will sharpen your skills, challenge your thinking and provide opportunities.
When you are aligned to purpose your voice begins to get heard and the volume of opportunities increases. The right people allow you to make the right impact. Everyone has a crowd to serve and as you align more with purpose you’ll be able to make choices more quickly. You see who and what fits the journey and you become less distracted. Having space to think enables you to serve your audience better.
Colour, Contrast and Brightness.
Living this way keeps your vision vivid.
When you make purposeful choices you will see a bigger picture worth watching. Others will even want to press record and watch again to see how you did it.
It will help you remain positive because you are aligned with what you were supposed to do. Too many founders flounder because they lose sight of why they started, becoming bogged down with everyone else’s expectations and forgetting their own.
Build a life worth recording and take control, today.
At Cre8ion we can help you own your future by putting purpose into the heart of your business. Discover your story and tell it in such a way you’ll get the right enquiries.
Start that journey today with the Purpose Playbook
http://cre8ion.co.uk/purpose-playbook
Or…
Read the The Crisis Catalyst and make the changes today to build a better tomorrow.