3 Vital Strategies to Create a Successful Business

Part 1 – The Individual

Starting a new business or running a business can be one of the most fulfilling things you ever do, but it takes the right people to achieve success. Human beings are the key to build and maintain a successful business.

In the following post, I would like to show you 3 essential tips that will help you get your business off the ground.

Before explain my tips, I would like to give you some thoughts why the human being is the main factor in a successful business.

The individual has become the most important asset in any organization…

… yet the individual human being is not really on the radar.

Everyone is talking about the „bubbling“ topic of New Ways of Working and the one that is right in the midst of it: the individual human being. Why is new ways of working so pressing at the moment?

Lots of Gallup reports indicate that „employees are not engaged“, „don’t feel motivated“, „are stressed“, „lack perspective“, … and many other negative. On the other side companies say that they are lacking good resources, good people are leaving, have increasing numbers of burnout cases. And at least for some European countries the sickness days of the workforce are increasing. Furthermore, I have read several articles that all is the „fault of lacking leadership“ or managers don’t do their job.

Why?

In my opinion the main factor in all these equations, statistics, reports and numbers is simply forgotten: the individual human being.

Each human being is unique. An individual with potentials, capabilities, behaviors, values, beliefs, liking and disliking and so on. Whilst the society, schools and universities try to streamline and uniform the human being so that it is a perfect workforce these individual differences are pushed in the background or the subconscious. Yet, these differences are still there and are – possibly over time – boiling under the surface.

Questions and Ideas

What if the human being is brought back into the spotlight? What if the individual potentials would come to the foreground and would be used by the person? Would that person feel tired and bored of using his talents or would this person be in his flow? Would it be less or more effort to lead such a person? Would this person create good or bad results? Many questions to which – in my humble opinion – the answers are quite obvious.

So let’s start with the first of the three strategies to build your successful business.

Strategy 1: The Individual – Use the unique skills & traits

As already mentioned, lots of surveys and Gallup reports show a level of frustration, tiredness or even burnouts, untapped potential or lack of motivation in the employee groups. Simply said, the individual is not happy.

If I think of myself and my working career, I felt unhappy because of these very same reasons. And I would bet that some of you reading this post have experienced the same.

I always tried to do what I thought would be expected from me. In school, during studies, in my jobs. Yes, I had a decent career and yet it just did not feel right.

I have taken endless personality tests and participated in endless personal development and training sessions. All very good but they did not reveal my core strengths.

And that is the key number 1 for me: reveal the strengths, skills and potential of a human being. Let the unique individual skillset come to the foreground and use these unique skills. There is no other person like you.

• Find out which career type you are. There are four different types: Initiators, Builders, Advisors and Evaluators. Each of these types have different ways of operating in a business context. Understanding your career type is the starting point. If you want to read more about the 4 career types have a look at my post „Why The Individual Is The New Hero Of Business„.
• Identify how do you best interact with others. Your career type plays a key role in the way you interact with others. As a Builder you typically attract others with your open and enveloping aura; as an Advisor you are open, focused and absorbing; as an Initiator you are self-contained and pushing outward to initiate; as an Evaluator you are quiet, gentle, unimposing and your presence reflects the environment as a whole. These are very different interaction styles that influence the way you deal with others and how they best deal with you.
• Understand your decision-making strategy. You have a unique decision-making strategy. Find out how to make the best decisions for yourself with confidence and the right timing. This is your key to eliminating resistance and experiencing success.
• Understand how you acquire and process information. There are a number of different ways people learn, process and integrate information. Each style has its own unique advantage and challenges and its own pace when integrating information. Knowing your assimilation style allows you to maximize your learning potential and lets you understand how you want to receive information. This is tremendously helpful for your communication. This allows you to respect your own pace and honor those who process information faster or slower than you. If you would like to have more information on the different information assimilation styles have a look at my blog post „What Are the Different Types of Information Assimilation?„
• Identify what is your best working environment. There are four different work career environments: Solo, Partnership, Small Group and Large Group. You have unique traits that fit best in some of these settings. Technically anyone can work in any environment, however, based on someone’s individual design some environments may be more “ideal” than others. The key is understanding how a person is going to operate based on the environment they are in.
• Identify your unique business skillset. You have specific and identifiable business skills that are important for any career or business endeavor. And you have one or more specific skillsets that you bring to the work you do, in an individual as well as partnership or group environment.

Enabling individuals to discover their skills, strengths and potential allows them to achieve material success in their career and business environment. If the individual aligns to their embedded design they will thrive in the workplace.

Identifying these skillsets is the first strategy for the individual.

In part 2 I will explore the business team in which the individual would be working. How can these individual skills be best used in a business team context.

So stay tuned for Part 2 – The Business Team – Bring the skills together