The key to replicating success in Hong Kong

Years ago my daughter, who was then nine, wanted to go wall climbing. Though she’d never done this before, her Mom thought it was a great idea for our weekend in Hong Kong.

When we got to the venue my nine-year old quickly geared up for the 60foot wall climb. Once geared and strapped for safety, she eagerly rubbed powder on her hands and was off in a jiffy!

Before her Mom and I could say, “Go girl, go!” she was up at the top, and from the peak she turned around to see us applaud her.

The fun really kicked in when my daughter was hooked up for a second go at the wall.

This time, though, she pulled herself up a few notches on the wall and stayed there. Her Mom and I cheered, “Go girl, go!” But my daughter, she just stayed there.

“C’mon you can do it, go, get to the top!” yelled her Mom. “Keep your eyes on the top and just go one step at a time,” I added.

She didn’t move an inch! She screamed back saying she was happy where she was and that we should let her be.

So there she stayed for the rest of our adventurous afternoon.

Fear, unfounded, had taken hold of her spirits and she would not budge an inch. Her past performance created no motivation for her and all she could do was to stay numb to all admonishments.

How many times do we find ourselves in the same circumstances? How many times do we get locked into a state of inactivity and stagnancy?

At the individual level this can be easily and directly related to fear and trauma. At the organizational level it is not easy to pinpoint this to fear, but, yes, it is almost always a very similar cause.

Recognizing and isolating this malady requires insights and experience from the leaders of that organization. Healing such a malady can be brought about by taking into account a Neuro Linguistic Programming principle which states that, “Anything can be accomplished if the task is broken down into small enough steps.”

Any of our previous processes, accomplishments and successes when recorded and studied carefully can be replicated over time, given that all external and internal circumstances are steady and similar.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming stresses that the reason we fail or stagnate is much more related to our state of mind and not as much to a state of external circumstances.

Ask someone to shoot a moving toy duck, and he can and will do it once, twice, thrice but beyond a certain number his sense of personal expectations will take a plunge.

He may not get tired, the aero dynamics of the moment may not change, but the awesomeness of the thought of repeatedly succeeding at the task will sabotage his confidence and faith in his own skills. He will then sink into fear and then failure.

It is a similar dynamism that occurred inside my daughter’s mind when she made her second attempt to climb that wall, and it is the same thing that happens to us when we get awed by having overcome a few too many hurdles towards growth in business.

The idea is to thin slice and segregate our thoughts and actions, about success, in such a way that they can be objectively recorded and then duplicated upon call.

This is what many massively successful organizations do time and again. Thin-slicing success is critically segregating the elements of success, analyzing them objectively and recording them for duplication.

Leaders, in Hong Kong, who want to coach others into success this is a powerful belief to start with “anything can be accomplished if the task is broken down into small enough steps.”