Understand the importance of being able to evolve and adapt in order to help grow your business.
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Estimated time: 4m
Many business owners reach a level of stability and grow content. But the world never stops moving. A solid business today can find itself on shifting ground tomorrow. The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most extreme recent examples, but changing trends, economic shifts and dozens of other factors can destabilize your business.
The solution? Cultivate a growth mindset.
Committing to the following approaches can help you stretch your thinking:
In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck finds that people with a fixed mindset often believe character, intelligence and creativity can't change. You are who you are. However, those with a growth mindset understand that we evolve and can adapt in nearly any situation. Failure is merely a chance to keep stretching. Choices make a difference. And there is always the hope of doing better. And research shows that it works.
People with a growth mindset are more likely to do their best work and stretch their talents further. A 2019 study of 12,500 ninth graders in urban, suburban and rural public high schools found that a short session on growth mindset helped students raise grades and stoked a desire to take more advanced courses.* Believing in your ability to grow isn't the risk you might think it is. In fact, working on growth can help protect your business from risk.
Chances are it took a lot of hard work and determination to get your business to where it is today. Angela Duckworth calls this "grit". In her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, she draws on the latest social science and interviews West Point cadets, winning coaches, National Spelling Bee finalists and CEOs to learn what different high achievers have in common.
What she found was that the people who could fall down, then stand up, dust themselves off and keep going were more likely to succeed. Grit mattered more than talent. Think of grit as your "why" plus a hedgehog approach to a growth mindset. It's about digging deep when you fall short or the work gets hard and pushing toward your goal. It's what you draw on during hard times to not only get through them but also come out stronger on the other side.
* Source: "A National Experiment Reveals Where a Growth Mindset Improves Achievement," Nature August 7, 2019.
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