We believe that fear is one of the greatest impediments to individual and organizational success: fear of failure, fear of criticism, fear of making a mistake, fear of not being liked or appreciated, fear of killing the company’s cash cow. Fear – it destroys you and your company. As if individualized fear were not bad enough, now we have the generalized fear of an economy that started a meltdown in August 2007. Put these two fears together and we become paralyzed and artificially accelerate the potential for failure.

Like the CEO of a New England-based manufacturing company who will not invest in sales, sales support and marketing because of the poor economy. His company has no debt, is profitable, and has positive cash flow and a strong cash reserve. He has a distinct market opportunity because the products he sells have a slight market advantage, and his competitors are in a less financially secure position. Because of the economy he is paralyzed by fear – fear that is unfounded based on the fundamentals of his company and the market opportunity. In recent months sales have started to fall off and he is thinking about cutting costs.

Sure the economy can be adversely affecting your business. But to generalize this in the absence of facts relating to your business and your market is insanity.

What should you do?

• Be aware that generalized fear may be contributing to your business performance
• Understand your business fundamentals
• Understand your market and the potential opportunities that exist
• Understand your competition and how they are reacting in the market
• Focus on what’s real as it relates to your business

Reacting to a generalized fear is exactly the wrong reaction to have in this market. Understand your situation. There are opportunities in this economy and the more your competition reacts with generalized fear the stronger your competitive advantage – if you act.

A sabotaging behavior in organizations is the inability to focus. You’ve experienced it; we all have. An idea/direction/agenda is pursued – oftentimes with great fanfare, but the executive team quickly loses focus and starts pursuing another great idea/direction/agenda and the process continues. It has a name: fad of the month. It has a reaction: cynicism. What is doesn’t have is the ability to generate sustained ongoing success for the organization.

An unfortunate example of this was recently revealed by a review panel looking into Rhode Island’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC). The EDC is charged with generating economic growth in the state. Rhode Island has a 10.5% unemployment rate, which is the 6th highest unemployment rate in the country. It is reported that no business sector in Rhode Island is growing and businesses are failing at an alarming rate. The review panel chairman likened the EDC to a “basket of frogs bursting with directionless energy.” In other words – no focus. The study panel recommended removal of the entire board, conducting a national search for a new Executive Director, creation of a public-private partnership to guide business recruitment, dissolution of the Economic Policy Council.

When an organization charged with spurring economic development in a state lacks focus, the results are catastrophic for its citizens. When a company lacks focus, jumps from idea to idea, the results are just as catastrophic for its employees, customers and stakeholders. It’s virtually impossible to make meaningful forward progress. Attention Deficit Disorder is never good for a company and it can be devastating for a state.

Take some time to look at your organization. How many initiatives do you have underway? How many initiatives did you start and stop over the past three years? Depending on your answer, you may have found an opportunity to capture a competitive advantage – focus.

Welcome to our blog, Growth without Sabotage^TM. Our blog focuses on helping individuals and organizations understand the devastating affect self-sabotaging behaviors have on you and your organization. Each week we identify self-sabotaging behaviors we have seen and the impact they have on performance. We discuss ways to avoid these behaviors, or recover. We will also show how addressing these behaviors can have a positive impact on growth, revenue improvement and costs. Readers are encouraged to send us their comments, thoughts, ideas and stories.

We see individuals and businesses fail at an alarming rate. Some fail because the market has closed for them; a sign of the changing times. But these are far less prevalent than businesses that close because of self-sabotaging behaviors – what they do to themselves. That is truly tragic because it doesn’t need to happen. Simple actions can prevent it: returning calls, responding promptly, taking time to build a relationship, not generalizing a poor economic condition on your successful business because of the general economy hence being paralyzed by an unfounded fear – for you. In these challenging economic times, competitive advantage will come from managing the intangibles well. Why? Because many of your competitors won’t. They are denying that self-sabotaging behavior exists in them or their company. We know because we have conducted extensive interviews and this is what we heard and what we observed. And they are denying that improving on the intangibles will have a material impact on their business. Let them continue to think this way; it’s your new competitive advantage.

Examples of the self-sabotaging behaviors we will be discussing are:

• Giving into fear
• Not developing real relationships
• The critical nature of responsiveness
• The pusher – or the danger of overselling
• Quitting at no – giving up too easily
• Limits of perfection
• Not wearing your personal beliefs on your sleeve
• Focus management – pay attention
• Executive presence – it’s more than just looking good
• Organizational baggage – a word to the corporate refugee

We look forward to developing a healthy and beneficial dialog with you.