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Niels Andersen discusses How do you and others maintain confidence in yourself, your ability, your organization and your future?
Question:: The news is peppered with stories of lay-offs and downsizing with no end in sight. How do you and others maintain confidence in yourself, your ability, your organization and your future with all of the negative news?
Our Expert Niels Andersen: You can secure your future and establish your position as a leader in your organization by recruiting and innovating during this down time. By demonstrating the demand for certain positions to secure or gain market share, you can gain the confidence of senior leadership and help your organization move forward.
Believe it or not, with the knowledge available, you have the ability and agility to hire star players. With proper planning, you can manage the process quickly, watch the bottom line and track results. Not only can you retain market share in this climate, with the right technology, you can gain market share.
Restoring confidence is crucial in the world of retention as well. Surveys show that primary care physicians are generally dissatisfied. By having access to these findings, steps can be put in place to restore their confidence. You can and should take the lead in elevating the confidence level throughout your entire organization! Success is always driven by confidence. In this economy, having a team where every individual exudes confidence in what they do, how they get things done, and in their innovations, will separate mediocrity from excellence and winning.
The success of your organization is driven by people with confidence in knowing what must be done and then making it happen with daring alacrity. Your organization needs you more than ever. The old saying that “when things get tough, the tough get going” is in fact what happens when a company prevails or a new one is started during economic recessions or depressions.
Since 1854, the US has encountered 32 cycles of expansions and contractions with an average of 17 months of contraction and 38 months of expansion. However, since 1980 there have been only eight periods of negative economic growth over one fiscal quarter or more, and three periods considered recessions.
A critical component to personal effectiveness is to constantly look at your situation from a historical context. Once you have that context, open your mind to new opportunities you previously would not have thought of.
Here’s what happens in bad times — disruption. Disruption means things change. And things often change quickly and dramatically. When things change, there are opportunities. And entrepreneurs and smart risk takers seize opportunities [Carpe Diem - Sieze the Day] — that’s what makes them entrepreneurs and leaders.
Companies Started in a Recession
Many of the most successful companies today where started during economic crisis. Sixteen of the 30 companies that make up the Dow industrial average were started during a recession or depression. These include Procter & Gamble, Costco, Intuit, GE, HP, Disney, Microsoft, and of course “yours truly” KontactIntelligence. Let this list inspire you to find opportunities to do something today for your organization and yourself that you are proud of!
All of you who read this article can choose to turn-on or super charge your confidence level. For me, that sensation is similar to downshifting and putting the pedal to the metal to pass a car on a two lane road and seeing a semi-truck coming toward you. But you have the confidence in your driving skills and the super performance of the car “you” choose to drive to get you in front of the slower car in a controlled and calculated fashion without being reckless. I literally feel that I switch gears in my head to a heightened state of alertness and confidence.
Titles don’t matter, those who push and plow through or around obstacles are the individuals needed to survive in times of trouble. Every successful person with a title today, started without one.
You are responsible and only you can control the effort and actions put forth to innovate and create solutions.
An organization is the sum of its’ people and confidence is needed by all on the team. Every area of the organization has to focus attention on confidence in creating solutions and identifying opportunities for market share and profitability.
Author
In 2000, while working as a physician recruiting executive at Sacred Heart Health System in Pensacola, Florida, Niels realized that he was in for an afternoon of tedious accounting-type work: manually updating opportunities, pouring over cvs, and setting up calls. All this effort just to fill one position. He started to wonder if there wasn’t a better way to manage the recruiting process. And so he began thinking about building what would become KontactIntelligence.