“an ounce of action is worth a tonne of theory.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson In his best-selling book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey identifies the first habit as; “Be Proactive”.
Report by Phillip Chichoni
Being proactive means taking action in advance to deal with an expected future situation.
Millions of people think up brilliant ideas every day. But very few of those ideas see the light of day.
I help dozens of people to develop their business plans every month. But few of those plans come to life. What stops all those brilliant ideas from being executed?
Speaking at the BusinessLink Networking Breakfast meeting last Thursday, one of Zimbabwe’s mot successful entrepreneurs, Kingdom Bank founder, Nigel Chanakira, pointed to one major cause for failure, which is not taking action.
In this country, we are blessed with brilliant people, as proved by the high level of literacy. But this brilliance is not reflected in success in business. We know a lot, but we don’t act enough on that knowledge.
Chanakira had some excellent advice to give, all taken from his own experiences in creating a number of businesses, including one of the few successful indigenous-owned banks.
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With an overpowering ambition to build a bank, Chanakira took his first course of action by learning as much as possible about finance and banking. He then gained the necessary experience by working in a reputable bank. He was then able to work on his big project of building his own bank. (To get a DVD of the event, please visit my website; http://smebusineslink.com).
The starting point for success is to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve. If we are not focused on one big goal, we will spend a lot of time and energy chasing one small goal after another.
A big goal will force you to really think of ways of achieving it. The human mind is so powerful such that we only use a very small proportion of its capacity. When called to action, the brain will summon unbelievable resources when required to. Aim big and your brain will support your efforts.
The next point is to acquire the necessary knowledge required in order to accomplish your goal. If you want to start a tourism business, are you taking action to learn about the tourism industry?
Are you learning the business management skills needed? If you want to succeed in selling, are you taking courses or reading books on successful selling? Are you researching how successful entrepreneurs started and are running their businesses?
Taking action does not have to be stressful. Having a big goal does not mean having to do everything at once. The best way to take massive action is to take one step, work it to the highest level and then move onto another venture.
I love the following lines which were said by Oprah Winfrey: “The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work.”
Oprah should know; she is one of the richest people in the world.
We have a natural tendency to do the easiest things first and avoid hard word. People will seek what is easy. On the other hand, the much tougher challenges will usually see a lot less competition and a lot more opportunity. Dreams without action will remain just that: dreams.
When Jeff Bezos came up with the idea for what would become Amazon.com, he went on a stroll in the park with his boss at the time to share his dream. At that time, in 1992, he was a senior vice-president for the New York hedge fund, DE Shaw. He described his dream to create a company that would sell books on the internet.
His boss listened intently before offering a bit of advice: “That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job.”
Big ideas of the ground-shifting variety are rare — and hard to pull off. But that’s the difference between the dreamer and the doer.
It took Bezos all of 48 hours to decide to quit his job and get started. Some 20 years later, Amazon has redefined the way people buy almost everything and it employs 56 200 people, and is valued at more than US$80 billion. That is the result of taking action.
Being lazy will leave you broke
Being lazy and putting off things you can do until later, will leave you broke and unsuccessful and that is what you were trying to avoid in the first place.
Sometimes we may not want to admit it, but we all want to succeed in life. Although success means different things to different people, the happiness that comes from accomplishing something worthwhile is universal.
And the best way of measuring success is by looking at how your actions touch and change other peoples’ lives. Will your community be better or worse off when you have accomplished your goals?
- Phillip Chichoni is a strategic business planning consultant who works with entrepreneurs and SMEs. He can be contacted by email to [email protected]
