Fear for sale

You can always tell when you are being sold something that you might regret buying later when the person selling it keeps talking about how sorry you will be if you don't buy it. They are selling fear, pure and simple. IBM used to call it "FUD: Fear, uncertainty and doubt." The goal was to convince the buyer how bad off he would be if he didn't buy whatever was being sold.

Right now we are being told to be afraid, very afraid. We are supposed to buy into that fear, to believe it, to act upon it. To fret and worry and rush around tearing out our hair.

Leadership is not about being afraid. Running your own company or managing a group of people is not about being afraid. In fact, the person in any situation most likely to be the natural leader is the person who is least fearful.

You can't be both. You can't be a successful leader, someone with the vision and the persistence to make it, if you are fearful.

People don't follow fearful people; they follow confident people. The best employees want to work for someone who is strong and confident, not weak and worried. Victims don't lead.

Buyers also want to associate with confident companies, companies that are convinced they have a future, companies that are betting on success - and doing the things that will ensure their success.

Hence, your ability to remain confident in the face of widespread fear and fretting has a direct effect on your ability to generate revenue.

How do you maintain your confidence? Where does it come from? In my experience, it comes from three sources: the things you choose to do, the way you do them, and why you do them.

The things you choose to do

We all decide, short-term and long-term, what we want to do. There is the overriding dream or goal - to solve a particular problem, to open a certain type of business, to become part of an industry - that sets the course of our working life. These are very individual decisions. Many of us also set out to do one type of thing - and going to college to train for it - and end up doing something completely different with our lives. So there are circumstantial and serendipitious components. But, driving us every day, is the desire to accomplish something - to apply our special skills to solving specific types of problems. This is where our work satisfaction comes from.

No matter what the economy is doing, there is always an opportunity, somewhere, to put our skills to work - assuming we can be flexible (and humble) enough to accept how customers want us to serve them.

So you are where you are, doing what you are doing, and the general chatter is telling you to be Very Afraid. If you focus on it, you will not hear your customers. You will not see the "river of revenue," even if you are knee-deep in the river. You will be looking elsewhere. You will be distracted from the very thing that could eliminate financial fear from your life.

What we pay attention to is one of the most important choices we make every day. It's so easy to be distracted from our intended course of action, minute-by-minute, day-by-day, in this age where distraction is literally at our fingertips, on the very screen where we do our work. Caterpillar infestation in Africa? Click. Political scandal? Click. Financial crisis? Click. World coming to an end? Click.

It's possible to go from one distraction to another, and before you know it, an hour has passed - an hour that could have been put to more productive use. If there is enough distraction on the airwaves about our economic plight, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Instead of going about our normal revenue-generating activities, we spend time paying attention to those telling us how terrible things are, and, as a result, things become terrible for us - personally.

Stephen Covey, in the "7 Habits" book, talked about the difference between "important" and "urgent" activities. How, too often, the "urgent" activities take over our day, at the expense of the "important" activities.

The problem with the news is that it must always sound urgent, or we don't consider it news. It sounds important because it is urgent. But when you're running a business, nothing is more urgent than the needs of your customers and your employees. Nothing is more revenue-generating than you concentrating on what you should be doing next.

The way you do them

In recent months I've had first-hand experience with people who say that they are good at certain things, and that they can do certain things, but, when it comes time to do those things, they do them without thinking ahead, and they don't do them properly. Next thing you know, they have to do them over.

There is actually a certain kind of behavior that leads to success in any type of project. You see it most often in the "old salts." First, they are always calm. Nothing, no matter how frightening, ever sets them off. Second, they always ask a lot of questions, and they ask more than one person, so they get all sides of the story, and understand the truth of the situation. Third, they consult any experts who can help them do the right thing. Finally, they start to explore possible solutions. They take time with this part, because doing this part right means the implementation will go smoothly.

Immature people, no matter how old they are, always think that the old salts are taking entirely too much time thinking through the problem, but old salts know it's the only way to make sure you do things only once. ("There's never enough time to do it right the first time, but always enough time to do it over.")

Once they've decided on the course of action, they have already thought out what to do, and they do it - or help others to do it. And, shortly after the others start to work, they begin checking on them. A few minutes later, then a couple of hours later, then a day later, then a couple of days later, and so on. They keep asking questions. What are you doing? How is it going? Why are you doing it that way? Any snags? If so, what did you do? How can I help?

This all seems so basic, but I see these "obvious" processes violated all the time, especially in situations where there is not enough skillful management to cover all of the activities going on. It's sad, really, that children and young adults are not taught basic project management skills as they go through school. These skills would set them up to advance, in the business world, where most of them will spend their working lives. Even if they ended up in non-business situations, these skills would ensure that they were successful in their field. Good managers are extremely rare, and much needed, in any type of organization.

Why you do them

People who are driven to obtain power do things differently than people who are driven by the desire to help. People who are driven by the desire to "be right" behave differently than those who are driven by the desire to get it right, even if it means admitting they are wrong - and then learning how to do it better. People who are afraid behave differently than those who are not afraid, especially in a crisis.

What drives you? Do you like being the big cheese, the guy in authority? Must you always be right? Does it upset you when someone corrects you? When something goes wrong, are you quick to point out that it wasn't your fault? Do you worry all the time? Are you driven by the desire to prove that you are the best? All of us have these characteristics to some degree, but if any of these characteristics dominate your behavior, you will alienate your customers, employees, and vendors. You will have to work harder to make every sale, get good employees and maintain long-term relationships with good vendors.

You could say that there are plenty of people in public positions who are driven by a lust for power. But for every "public figure," there are thousands of normal working people who go to work every day, either working for someone else or working for themselves. They must interact with other people all day long - conversing, cooperating, deciding, giving instructions, explaining and educating. The best ones also inspire others. We know it when we see it - everyone recognizes someone who is inspirational. Those who are inspirational are always driven by the desire to solve problems and help others.

No matter what the government is doing, no matter what the news media is saying about what the government is doing, no matter how much we are told we must be afraid, if you want to keep making more sales, you need to switch to a different channel. Your mindset is, by far, the single most important factor in your success.

Remind yourself why you love doing what you do. Turn your attention to your own business, your own customers and employees and vendors. What do they need right now? How can you make it easy for them to buy your product, or work for you? Nothing matters more than this.

They may be selling fear right now. But we don't have to buy it.