ILLUSTRATION BY RUTH MACAPAGAL
In my experience as a consultant and advisor to business leaders, Fortune 500 CEOs and even billionaire entrepreneurs, which has earned me the nickname “mentor of the giants” by Fortune, I have seen that there is one area that is completely and utterly misunderstood by most companies and business leaders: the secret to how to motivate yourself, and your employees, to reach even the most ambitious goals.
I was recently enlightening a group of entrepreneurs in Kuwait about how to future-proof their businesses and make 2023 their best year ever, both personally and professionally. One of them shared his life story with me. He had grown up poor and at some point, his father even left the country to leave his son behind to take care of the massive amount of debt he had accumulated after a few failed business ventures.
The Middle Eastern son with only two options
The son found himself with only two options: achieve enough success to pay the debt and clear the family’s name, or live forever in shame because in the Middle East, a family’s reputation is key to your future success.
The son became a successful entrepreneur, launching several businesses. But now, his goal was to dominate a whole sector in the fast-moving consumer goods industry in the Middle East. He came to me for advice because he could somehow not replicate his former successes and wanted to know what the missing piece in the equation was.
I quickly came to realize that he had taken the first important step in making visions a reality: He had created a big shiny mental image of what he wanted to accomplish, even seeing himself on the cover of Forbes Magazine in the Middle East. He had also put down a clear deadline for it. That image was so crystal clear that his wife had even given him a hand-painted version of it as a present to hang over his desk. But what was he missing?
What Dwayne Johnson, Walt Disney and Bill Gates have in common
I was leading a strategic road map planning session for one of our clients in Asia recently. When some of the business unit heads presented their plans for 2023, the owners commented that they had seen the exact same goals come up again and again, year after year, without fundamental progress. Why? Many of the business units were missing the same important element in the equation of how to accomplish goals as the Kuwaiti entrepreneur.
A goal is not enough. You have to build a propulsion system that aggressively drives your progress forward by having the right levels of determination and resolve.
But how do you build that true power of motivation, resolve and determination? And how do you apply that not only to yourself but also to your teams so that you can reach your most ambitious goals together?
If you search for one thing that a lot of American billionaires have in common, the answer is: failure. Walt Disney had gone bankrupt before he teamed up with his brother and moved to Hollywood to found the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio.
Henry Ford founded the Detroit Automobile Company in 1899 as a mechanic and engineer. It went bankrupt in 1901. Later, Ford founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903, which introduced the first inexpensive automobile to the world: the Model T Ford. The rest is history.
Why the “Rock” keeps his back against the wall
Dwayne Johnson’s films have grossed over $3.5 billion in North America and over $10.5 billion worldwide. With a net worth of $800 million in 2022, he is one of the world’s highest-grossing and highest-paid actors. He has named all his production companies “7 bucks” to remind himself of the pivotal moment in his life when he had only $7 in his pockets after a failed career in American football.
In a speech given to a group of American athletes, he said that having his back against the wall, constantly reminding himself of his “lowest point” has encouraged him to build extraordinary success, endure hardship and overcome whatever obstacle has been in his path.
Billionaire Bill Gates’ first venture, Traf-O-Data had only modest success. But in the words of Bill Gates, this led to the foundation for the creation of Microsoft Corp. a few years later.
The secret success formula
The key is that we need a combination of moving toward a big shiny goal but also “away from failure” to reach our goals faster. The more determined we are, the faster we reach our goals. Never undervalue the power of becoming tired of the way things are and of never wanting to be at your lowest point again—as an individual and as a business. The overlooked success motivators are failure and becoming fed up with what is.
I happen to be good friends with Google top executives and also with one of its earliest engineers when there were just 100 people at Google. The founders kept calculating the cash burn rate to predict when Google was about to die if they did not get more money, sometimes even daily. While a lot of startups have to do that as part of good accounting principles, it is also a very clever way to motivate everyone on what to move away from: dangle the carrot of your next big goal in front of their eyes but also the image of potential future or repeated failure if things are not done correctly.
To reach goals, you need to have determination more than anything else. If you have enough resolve, you will figure things out—and persevere through the bad times.
How to apply it
The Kuwaiti entrepreneur was first motivated by paying off his family’s debt, and he wanted to move away from the dire prospect of having his family name in shame. But now he has become too comfortable. What he is missing is a similar image of what to move away from. Identifying that will be the missing link to catapult him to the Forbes cover page.
One of our Asian clients, the owner of a family business conglomerate that is a market leader in the food industry, was motivated by never making the same big mistake again that he had made in the past. He had wanted to put a new revolutionary product on the market but ended up being too late because the entire organization was too slow.
When he approached me and my company to future-proof their business, we ended up remodeling their entire value chain, making them faster and more agile, identifying nonperforming board members, redoing their entire vision, mission and slogan, and helping them to pivot their business. He would have never been so open to change that was necessary to ensure the sustained growth of his business if he had not kept that former failure in the back of his mind.
3 to thrive
1. Keep the shiny images of your big hairy audacious goals in the front of your—and your team’s—mind.
2. Combine this with an image of what to move away from or avoid the failures that are lurking around the corners if you do not make it.
3. Remind yourself and your people that most companies, even today’s market leaders, are just one or two major strategic decisions away from complete failure. INQ
Tom Oliver, a “global management guru” (Bloomberg), is the chair of The Tom Oliver Group, the trusted advisor and counselor to many of the world’s most influential family businesses, medium-sized enterprises, market leaders and global conglomerates. For more information and inquiries: www.TomOliverGroup.com or email
Tom.Oliver@inquirer.com.ph.