Day 37: The self help solocide

Driving through the Kalahari today the car got stuck in thick red sand. It took me two hours to dig the car out again, which gave me a lot of time to reflect on the self help movement.

California is seen as the birth place for the human potential movement. This mindset has progressively attached itself to more and more aspects of people's lives. The objective being a self reliant soul that is at peace with its needs and can achieve anything it sets its sights on. Everything from parenting to politics can now be viewed through the Aquarian enlightenment. I wonder if all this focus on the self is not somehow leading to a kind of organizational solocide - death of potential due to excessive focus on self confidence. With a generation of managers fed on a diet of "believe in yourself" I wonder how much room they leave for others.

Even though one often hears noises about "we are all one" in these circles, it strikes me that the net effect is a self indulgent one. After all, you mostly just hear about people working on themselves.
On this journey the one thought that has returned to me again and again is how we might find ways to change the focus from self perception to collaborative envisioning. Most of the executive function in business revolves around how a group of leaders convinces itself and its shareholders of the new strategy. Like self help groups there seems to be the pervasive belief that if we believe in ourselves enough, this plan will come to pass.

But how about a different lens? What would happen if instead of asking: "what is the size of the potential market?" we ask instead "how many people want to see us succeed?" What is the reflective image of our ambition?

By shifting the focus to an external perspective we completely change not only our potential risk and revenue model, we also open new ways to co-pete. By shifting the discussion from our 'narrowsistic' set of interests we set the basis for more robust discussions about a business constituency.

Just imagine the difference between: "how many people want to see us succeed with new widget x" (the answer: only us and that is why we spend so much money convincing everyone else)
and "how many people want to see us succeed in eradicating childhood obesity through sport/food/community programs." This is similar to the old marketing myopia discussion, about focussing on benefits versus features, however the twitter nation makes it possible to scope the debate in new ways. Who you engage and how you engage with them makes all the difference in focussing on the right problem to fix.

Companies should be engaging with the people who want to see them succeed to avoid the slow inward spiral of over confidence that gets you stuck in the sand.