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YES YOU CAN! |
It is easy to develop a negative attitude or receive advice
from negative people. This is especially
true when tackling difficult situations.
In my first turnaround, I was repeatedly told to walk away from the company
because of major failings in the financial market place. The company was a text book case of a boiler-room
style investment bank overselling the company’s stock in an IPO. Adding to the complexity, the company’s technology
was not advanced enough to keep sophisticated investors excited. The over promotion caused the stock to move from
the $5 offering price to a $20 per share price on the first day. Due to failings of the underwriter and lack
of advanced technology, the price fell to around $1 per share in less than a month. The underwriter (also major investor post IPO) had similar results with 5 other companies. Their loss of cash, coupled with other events,
resulted in their declaring bankruptcy.
The clearing house each of the six companies’ failed and they declared
bankruptcy as well. All of the companies the underwriter had taken public were mentioned
in nasty news articles about the underwriter.
This resulted in guilt by
association for the company I was attempting to turnaround!
It would have been easy to not attempt to turn the company
around, but it is important to keep an open mind. Learning to approach problems in an organized
manner and not assuming failure is inevitable is an important part of building
a business. Problems may be wide and
varied and solutions are not in books. People
often have biases and may be correct by responding with their gut reaction to
problems. Many times gut reactions are
not correct and they limit an individual’s ability to see alternatives or novel
solutions. One of the greatest
challenges occurs once you state something is not possible. The reason this can limit your solutions is a
bit like anchoring, i.e. “a cognitive
bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first
piece of information offered.” Stating
something is not possible tends to prevent you from looking for solutions thus
limiting your creativity. So, even in
the face of adversity and negativism from so many, I had to stay focused and
believe anything could be done. The key
was finding a solution that might work and trying it.
It is different when one works extensively to resolve a
problem and is not able to find an appropriate solution. The learning process in attempting to solve
the issue may involve many discussions and readings of articles. The increased knowledge may allow that
creative solution to occur spontaneously in your quiet moments. The lack of an extensive attempt, diligent
learning, and negative anchoring to a negative outcome limits options and
ability for creativity to take over. Adopting
a negative attitude dooms the process or at least lowers the success rate. It also decreases chances for a more
creative output.
There are steps one can take to solve what may seem
unsolvable. They may or may not fit with
your personality, but if the problem is significant, trying them may be worth
the effort.
Improve attitude: Assume all problems have a solution rather
than your problem is not solvable. By
taking the positive step, you eliminate the anchoring and now must seek
alternatives.
Learn as much as
possible: You have identified a
problem. Now learn everything possible
about the problem, and surrounding issues.
The more you learn the better chance your creative side can contribute.
Talk with people
having different skills: One of the
ways some companies increase creativity is forcing staff with differing skills
to be in close contact resulting in increased interaction. The reason is that different skilled people
discussing a problem may lead to solutions because of cross-fertilization. The same can be true for your problem
solving.
Identify alternatives: While all problems have solutions, some solutions
may create more problems. Having
alternatives allows for hybrid solutions or a work-around that may be better
for your situation. Being too rigid on
the type of solution can be just as limiting.
Keep an open mind. The goal is to
make your company a success not make all your ideas work the way you thought
they should.
Do not give up too
easily: There may come a time when
you must abandon an approach or problem because time or costs may become
limiting. Having alternatives can help
in such cases, but giving up too easily may cause you to miss that one great
idea that can turn a failure to a huge success.
At this point, you may be wondering what
happened in the turnaround situation.
Maybe I was just lucky, but the company grew from a $3M valuation to
$300M in 5 years! I guess all the people
that thought it could not be done, were just wrong!Taffy Williams is the author of: Think Agile: How Smart Entrepreneurs Adapt in Order to Succeed to via Amazon