Whatever the context - from plowing a field of corn to refactoring an algorithm - there are some fundamental principles which invariably work to unlock potential in our tools. And everyone's happier when tools work better.
However, one need only take a cursory glance around their industry (or perhaps their company) to see so much wasted effort, misapplication, and untapped potential.
Our work optimizing our clients' HubSpot portals, personnel and processes has given us the experience of proving these principles again and again.
Now we'd like to share this knowledge with you. So let’s begin!
1. Pioneering
“With a tree, all the growth takes place at the growing tips. Humanity is exactly the same. All the growth takes place in the growing tip: among that one percent of the population. It's made up of pioneers, the beginners. That's where the action is.” - Abraham Maslow
From horse and cart to the motor car; fax to email; dial-up to broadband - we all know that new tech makes us vastly more efficient.
But in the competitive landscape of business, your rivals have access to all the same new technologies as you. So how can you be more efficient than them?
The answer: adopt the new technologies faster.
In other words, be a pioneer! That means leaning into new technologies even if they aren’t perfected yet, with the optimism that once they are perfected your team will already be competent with them. If you wait for perfection, you’ll be a late adopter.
Today the most promising prospects for pioneers seem to lay in the land of Artificial Intelligence. But the speed with which AI is taking over has created so much confusion and so little certainty.
Advising clients every day on the right ways to implement AI into their CRM and its associated personnel/processes means that we are staying ahead of the curve constantly, and we’re happy to answer your questions.
2. Kill Your Assumptions
“Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy.” – Tony Robbins
So often we find our clients working diligently on systems that will help them achieve X, Y, and Z… despite the fact HubSpot already has a feature for that. The problem is, they believed it wasn’t possible in HubSpot. This assumption cost them untold hours. It needs to be killed.
We’ve seen teams creating social posts in each separate platform instead of using the centralized scheduler in their Marketing Hub.
We’ve seen managers updating targeting lists in spreadsheets instead of letting Active Lists do it for them.
We’ve seen directors running analytics on Google Sheets instead of configuring what they want to see on the Dashboard.
“We didn’t think we could do that in HubSpot,” we often hear. And with such a vast number of features, nobody can be expected to know about everything that HubSpot does. But we do. It’s our job.
Assumptions plague us all in every walk of life because they slip in under the foundational thoughts of our problem solving, and so they evade our awareness.
Sometimes an outsider perspective can help you recognize your false assumptions, leading us to…
3. Adopt Outsider Perspectives
“We can’t solve our problems by using the same thinking that got us into them.” - Albert Einstein
It’s cliche because it’s true. Sometimes you need a fresh pair of eyes to look at your system, because those working with it are too close to see what’s obvious. Familiarity makes us blind.
Establishing an outsider perspective from within your team is hard, but not impossible to do. There are exercises and practices which you can find online and follow. These will likely be quite helpful.
However, if you want to combine the other four ways of unlocking potential mentioned in this article, you might consider getting your outsider perspective from vBase Digital.
4. Be a Loser
Human beings have a natural tendency to lose objectivity in the face of loss, I recently learned from ‘Best Loser Wins.’ This book by one of the most prolific high-stake retail traders in the world, Tom Hougaard, explains how loss-aversion is baked into our hypothalamus, and often leads us astray in the modern world of business.
The hypothalamus, or ‘reptilian brain’, is the most ancient part of our brain which deals with our most primal instincts of fight or flight. It’s programmed to provoke a fear response at the prospect of loss, which can be quite inhibiting in the business world.
“Neurobiology has shown we experience a financial loss 250% more intensely than a financial gain.” - Tom Hougaard
Loss and failure are the stepping stones to success, and are often necessary to figure out the most optimal way of doing something. So, it’s easy to see how being oversensitive to loss prevents a team from reaching their full potential.
Whether an instinctive aversion to pursuing activities that may fail or a tendency to ignore the pain of past failures, by not fully utilizing the phenomena of our failure and being ‘the best loser’ we won’t ever fulfil our potential.
5. Art is Theft
“Art is theft” is a quote we’ve all heard. But have you ever stopped to think about the person who said it? No, it wasn’t an artist known for deriving their work from others, as so many pop musicians are known to do. It was possibly the most original artist to ever live - Pablo Picasso!
If this guy was stealing from other artists, then it’s quite clear that one can still be completely original while copying what works from others. Art is theft.
That means your unique business context can still be completely unique despite emulating the successful systems of other entirely different businesses.
As experts in this field, our CRM-artists know how to emulate the configurations we’ve seen work well for other organizations like yours.
Now Use The Principles!
If you’d like to work through these proven methods to unlock potential within your team, use our handy free checklist below.
By running through the five principles in the above checklist, your team can
- Consider new areas to pioneer
- Check self-limiting assumptions
- Adopt an outsider perspective
- Rationalize their fears of failure
- Be inspired to steal like an artist
It might just unlock some valuable potential in your team today.
Thanks!
We hope this article helps you to unlock the potential of the systems around you. Because we believe humanity is happier when our tools work better.
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