A Case Study on Innovation

As a leader of the team, it’s your job to cleanse those around you of their limiting beliefs. Everyone has them, and they’re the primary obstacle to forward progress on any team, including yours. As a Financial Advisor, years ago I had a client who told me their number one Financial Objective is “Financial Independence.” What excited them about their future was the hope and expectation that some day they could wake up and focus exclusively on activities that mattered most to them, without the need of doing things just to make money. They were willing to make sacrifices today, because in the future they wouldn’t need to do that anymore, or so I thought. This is where limiting beliefs comes into the story. As a part of their comprehensive written lifetime financial strategy we created with them, this client was now selling one of the companies they owned. The sale of this particular company would add more funds to their Financial Independence goal, and it would free-up time to focus on their other businesses which were more profitable, and this one was a big distraction. Their limiting belief number one was that they should fix this company, and that selling it would be an admission of failure. But when they saw that the proceeds from the sale would accelerate their Financial Independence goal, the idea began to appeal. They soon realized that selling this distracting company accomplished 3 useful things. 1. They would monetize one of their businesses, by taking some chips off the table, converting the company into cash. 2. The result of deploying that cash into other investments would be diversification which would lower the risk of their overarching strategy. 3. Finally, selling that distracting business would allow them to better focus much time and energy on their more profitable companies, which made this sale a high-payoff activity. Originally, when I asked them the purpose of starting and owning that particular business, they explained how starting and owning that business would accelerate their goals. That was their limiting belief. When they realized that if the objective was to reduce the amount of time it takes to achieve their Financial Independence goal, they “saw the light.” That objective would actually be met by selling, not keeping the company. They had created something of great value, and by taking those chips off the table, they were now closer to their big goal. So we all have limiting beliefs. As leader, it’s your job to help your people identify when their limiting beliefs are creating obstacles. You can help them by identifying their strengths, and trying to assign projects and tasks aligned with them. But since limiting beliefs are usually also “blind spots,” reframe issues for them. Shine a light on their limiting beliefs. Help them focus on what they can control, so they stop obsessing over things they can’t control.