The Barrier To Your Growth May Not Be Strategy

This week I sat in an INSEAD classroom, module two of the Executive Master in Change. The session was not about pricing, markets or strategy. It was about me.

The assignment sounds simple and is not. I had to look into what is actually blocking my growth, and how I make decisions when I am dealing with another person. Including the possibility that an old relationship experience is still deciding on my behalf today.

Decisions that look like money decisions

Most owners believe they decide with numbers. Price. Cost. Headcount. Return.

But the most expensive decisions in a business are rarely about money.

The conversation we postpone for two years because of how a previous partner once spoke to us. The good person we never promote because they remind us of someone who left. The boundary we fail to set because we learned early that setting one carries a price.

On the surface these look like business decisions. Underneath, they are an old relationship repeating itself.

What it costs if you never look

The cost is not one large loss. It is many small ones, repeating, year after year.

The same owner stops at the same ceiling every time the business climbs. Not because the market blocks him, but because at that altitude he has to do something that once hurt him. So he does not do it. He gets busy elsewhere, and the business stays where it is.

The most deceptive part is that it feels like fate. It is a pattern.

What becomes possible

Once the pattern is visible, it stops being destiny.

Growth is not only new capability. Sometimes it is unlearning a reflex that once protected us and now limits us.

A leader does not change through a lecture. He changes when he identifies one moment that keeps repeating, names it, and chooses a different action the next time it arrives.

One action this week

Take the decision you have postponed the longest. Not the biggest one, the oldest one.

Then ask one question honestly. When I imagine making that decision, whose voice do I hear?

If the voice belongs to someone who is not in the room today, someone with no connection to the numbers in front of you, then it is not the business leader deciding. It is an old experience.

Write down what kind of person that voice belongs to. Not to blame anyone, but so you can see that the decision can be made again with today’s facts rather than yesterday’s wound.

An unnamed pattern keeps governing. A named one can be chosen.

A question for you

Which decision in your business is actually an old relationship deciding for you?

Many entrepreneurs want to grow their business, sales and profit to the next level, RM10 million and above, but they cannot see what is holding them back or how to reach the next stage. RCG has helped many entrepreneurs grow their business to RM10 million, RM25 million, RM50 million and RM100 million.

We start with a free Business Diagnosis at rcg.my.

Datuk Wira