Everyone is looking for security. Security in job, in relationships and in business. They want to join a large multi-national company as they feel their job would be secure there or want to look at the salaries of their to be spouses for feeling secure.
Why is security and growth an outside factor? Try something different, forget security and you will have more security and growth – how so? It’s all about the behaviors that come about and what that leads to.
Dividing the Pie
When one is focused on security, one is concerned about securing their own rights and the focus is on getting a share of ‘fixed sized’ pie. The effort is on getting large piece of the pie.
Proving and defending yourself
Once the focus is on getting a higher share, then extra effort is put in proving yourself and if need be heavily marketing yourself. While some energy may be spent on increasing performance a good amount is spent on proving and defending how your contribution is larger.
Misplaced complacency
Just because a company is large it does not create wealth without creating value or contributing. Hence by extension they can’t provide raises and security to their employees unless they are continually competitive.
Many large companies almost act like a hiding place for people as it is easy to get lost in the numbers and not be noticed. But then when it is time to cut back the ones who go first are the ones who are not normally noticed.
Automatic Rightful Promotions
Many of us have a time bound mentality where we feel that after 2 years one gets promoted into another position. After a year one gets x% raise and so on and so forth. When we think like that we are in for a rude shock and end up blaming the system or the boss or the economy.
So where does growth come from? And how does one get security and growth both?
Constant learning and reinvention
The world will keep changing and there is nothing you and I or President Obama can do about it. Skills will become obsolete, telegrams will disappear just like horse drawn carriages so will Blackberry someday.
What you do well today will not be valued tomorrow. What made you good money today may not even earn you a living tomorrow – these are facts of life and best accepted completely.
When one is open to constant learning one is constantly updated and able to “see and seize” new opportunities. Its not about one day suddenly teaching an old dog new tricks, its about not letting the tricks older at all and adding new tricks.
When learning is constant reinvention is an automatic process. When reinvention is done as last resort there is a lot of pain and potential failure.
Focus on growing the pie
When one is not concerned about security, one’s energies are easily focused on doing things to grow the business / the relationship and add more value in everything they do. This additional value add is what creates more wealth and hence grows the pie so all can have more without worrying about how to slice the pie.
Creating Space for new
Growth requires newness. And for new things to come in there needs to be empty space created. The empty space is created by letting go of our hold and association with our current position.
Summary
Change in inevitable. Instead of holding tighter let go and fly! Let go of your current safe zones and create more to share and grow. Fire yourself as a programmer so you can become a manager. Fire yourself as a manager so you can become an inventor and so on.
Beautiful .. stay hungry and stay foolish!