Self-assessment is an
art, and knowing precisely who we are, where we’re at, and what we offer is an essential component to business management. Looking inward can be cathartic, it
can be eye opening, and it can even be shocking. But no matter what, it has to
be revealing and it has to be authentic. In the process of assessing ourselves,
if the truth does not surface, even if it’s a hard truth to face, your business
could soon find itself in peril. Of course, it’s hard, even seemingly
impossible, to be incredible – to always be ahead of the business game and
driving the market forward – but it should always be an ideal to strive toward.
Most of the time every business out there is just trying to stay relevant and
stay in the game – we want to find a niche, grab a slice, and build a life. A
credible business that stays true to itself and that feels solid from sunrise
to sunset is where the lion’s share of us to look to invest our time and energy
- it’s how we earn our living; it’s how we eat. Done properly, a thorough
self-assessment can be the difference between being a credible business and
being an incredible business. On the other hand, an inauthentic self-assessment
can be the difference between being credible and being eaten alive.
Leave your ego at the door
The story of how the
artist suffered through countless years of having their work overlooked and
receiving rejection after rejection before they eventually had their big
breakthrough is so mainstream that it’s become cliché. Typically, the reason
even some of the greatest artists, musicians, and writers suffered for so long
isn’t because the world wasn’t ready, or that their work just hadn’t reached
its audience, it’s because their work probably wasn’t very good. Inventors also
go through hundreds of designs that fail miserably before they hit on the one
that works, goes public, and then viral.
The roadblock that
proves so difficult for these artists and inventors to overcome is their own
conceptions of their real, or perceived, talent. In much the same way that a
mother always believes her child is the most beautiful baby ever born, so an
artist believes that their work is brilliant. It’s too crushing to the psyche
to admit that what came from the most intimate part of us is ugly or worthless,
so we end up living in denial instead of taking the positive out of negative
criticism.
Harness the force of negative feedback
Anyone who has studied
the ancient Chinese martial art of judo
understands that the key to subduing your opponent is to use their own weight,
and their own force, against them. This is how we have to begin to understand
self-assessment from a business standpoint. If our work, or our product, is
receiving negative feedback it’s important to make the distinction that it’s
not as much about our clients pointing out our inadequacies, as it is about
responding to what our clients are telling us they want. Every piece of
negative feedback, whether about your product or service, or your competitors,
is a window into what customers in your market are looking for. Isn’t business,
after all, about meeting that demand?
The seldom-told story
Whereas the story of the
struggling artist has become almost trite, there is another story that you
don’t really ever hear about. It’s the story about the artist who after years
and years of rejection eventually just gave up and was never heard of, ever.
It’s not a story many people like telling, but the unfortunate reality is that
it is by far the more common. Conventional wisdom tells us that what separates
the successful artist from the one that got out of the game was a result of
their superior talent. But in art, as in business, Darwinian principles rule
where it is not the strongest of the species that survives, but the one most
responsive to change. The successful artist, like a successful business, is
able to tap into what their clientele is looking for by successfully
internalizing the criticism they receive. After an objective self-assessment
whose focus is on growth, one can then use any criticism to make positive
strides forward and leap from being edible to credible, or even credible to
incredible.
