When the storm clouds gather around the business community business owners and decision makers are under more pressure than ever to ensure that the enterprise survives. This article explores how a fundamental human reaction can adversely affect the performance of your business, and suggests how to overcome it.
Rob Wendes Information Technology Consultant 16th January 2009
When the lights go out
Imagine you are in a dark room, no lights, and only the merest rack of light issuing from a small fissure in a wall to lift the gloom. You wait, and as you do your anxiety rises, mainly fuel by your brain, which insists on reasoning with you. You wish that it would shut up, because the more you stay there in this dark forbidding prison, then the more your brain conjures up demons to torment you.
If you are the type of person who doesn't think about it too much, then you can control your brain waves and focus on some other feature or concern that removes the anxiety and pushes to the rear of your mind. But for many people, the brain just takes over and the longer they stay in an enclosed space, alone and away from human contact, the more likely they are likely to feel real fear. The fear that the bogey man might get them.
Getting off the ground
Some people just can't get into an aeroplane. It may seem irrational to many of us, but for those who experience this anxiety the moment they see an aeroplane their mouth goes dry and their heart palpitates. As they get closer to the aeroplane, so their fingers tense and the palms of their hand start to perspire. By the point at which the aeroplane is about to take off, their heart is racing and it would only take a screaming child to turn anxiety into an almost unbearable fear that drives them almost to hysteria.
Getting a grip
Fear is a corrosive emotion that makes humans make the wrong decisions and become illogical. There is no doubt that fear is seated in a complex biological reaction that goes all the way back to 'fight of flight'. In the distant past our hunter gatherer ancestors were programmed with these two reactions to threatening situations. If you were brave then fighting the threat was the primary option, and the flow of adrenaline would boost the body to sustain it through the danger. For those who let fear take over, the only answer was flight, with adrenaline driving your legs away from the danger.
Unless you were able to keep cool when fear took hold, then it was a fair bet that you were doomed. Fear fuels poor decisions, especially when there is nowhere to run to, leading to the lemming like reactions that make us run right over the edge of the cliff.
Control fear, and fight is the message that should be coming over loud and clear, and that is exactly what you need to do in your business. It's easier to fear the worst and take no action. It's easy to shelve your corporate aims and crawl into a shell until the danger is past. It's easy to run lemming like over the edge of a cliff. It's not so easy to control your fear and fight, because that seems dangerous. But in the end it's those who control their fear and those who fight back who take control and win.
Don't let fear strangle your business. If you are a business owner or decision maker then get help, get informed and get fighting.
Business Technology Consulting
