photo by dregsplod

I had a great question come up from the post I used in my newsletter last week:  Who Needs Sleep?  8 Things to Watch Out For.  The question was in reference to point #3 – Constantly fighting fires (living in Quadrant 1) and brought up an issue that I think almost everyone can relate to.  The stuff in Quadrant 1 is IMPORTANT and urgent, so you can’t blow it off without serious impacts, so when things are crazy, how can you find the time to work in Quadrant 2?

Jason did a better job than I did with the question – here’s the actual text:

“In the small business environment where there is only one employee, the owner, what practical ways can we focus on quadrant II and yet keep quadrant I from failing?  I’m sure it’s about balance, but that’s easier said than done.”

So if you’re spending all of your time herding cats and you don’t have  a lot of help, how do you make things better?

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   photo by tao_zhyn

Habit number seven from Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly effective people is “Sharpen the Saw”.  He uses a story of a woodcutter who is struggling after several days of sawing wood – he’s lost effectiveness because his saw is no longer sharp.  From Covey’s perspective, there are different aspects to this – physical, mental, spiritual and social.  If you want to remain at peak effectiveness, you need to sharpen up in all of those areas.

I’m fortunate to be part of a great group called the Professional Business Coaches Alliance (www.pbca.biz ).  It’s a group of business coaches from all over North America who all have their own companies but share common values and approaches to helping business owners succeed.

Our annual meeting was this past weekend in New Orleans and I reflected on the flight home how this was a really well timed chance for me to ‘Sharpen the Saw’ across a lot of different areas.  We spent a lot of time learning and discussing new ideas, best practices and how to be more successful in our businesses (and how to make our clients more successful).  We also spent time connecting and reconnecting with colleagues who share a lot of common ground (and I had some great meals in New Orleans!).

When was the last time you sharpened your saw in a meaningful way?

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   photo by Net Efekt 

Imagine that all of the money, influence and power in your world is a pie (apple in this case).  Now imagine hundreds…no thousands…of people in your industry, your geographic space, your niche of business all vying for their piece of that pie!  There is no way there’s enough pie to go around – if you’re going to get the pie you need it’s clear that you need to step on people, be ruthless and constantly be looking out for yourself.  You must win at all costs!

Sound overblown?  Unfortunately it’s not – it’s called a scarcity mentality and most people default to this mentality unless they actively guard against it.  Here’s Stephen Covey’s take (from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Habit #4 Think Win-Win):

Most people are deeply scripted in what I call the Scarcity Mentality….

The Scarcity Mentality is the zero-sum paradigm of life. People with a Scarcity Mentality have a very difficult time sharing recognition and credit, power or profit – even with those who help in the production. The also have a a very hard time being genuinely happy for the success of other people.

It’s an insidious problem because it gets worse with fear, so if you start to struggle in your business, you will shift to more of a scarcity mindset, which brings on more fear, less collaboration and ultimately makes all the problems worse! 

You start looking at all transactions as a Win-Lose proposition – you have to win and the other person has to lose (‘cause there’s only so much to go around).  However Win-Lose relationships aren’t sustainable and you’ll soon find yourself alone against the world wondering why everyone has turned on you!

Overall it’s a pretty bleak picture (especially since we started with apple pie!).

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