It's Natural, We Self-Fulfill Our Human Tendencies.

No Crystal Ball Here, Just Good Integrity.

Business leaders are human beings, too.  Business leaders tend to do what other people do.  Business leaders are not so completely different...away from behaving like non-business thinkers.  At least, not all of the time.  In fact, most business leaders actually walk this world in very much the same way as non-business people do.  The human condition is often times very much the same.

Even the great ones have similar tendencies that make them seem very much the same as everyone else.  You have heard the phrase, "They put their pants on one leg at a time, the same way everyone else does."

Steve Jobs, for example, was naturally afraid of facing his early signals of cancer.  As a result, he delayed getting them checked out properly in the earlier stages.  Even though he had the economic means and a higher access to better care he failed like many normal people fail to find earlier methods of preventive care.  As a result, his natural tendencies of fear took over the wheel of charge and reacted well too late to prevent his life from being taken over by a deadly disease.  A somewhat preventable process was avoided.  Once again the normal pattern to allow natural tendencies ruled out the use of higher levels of leadership courage.

Tiger Woods, President Bill Clinton, Bernard Madoff, Alan Greenspan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Paul McCartney and thousands more have become great business leaders in their own right who have permitted their human tendencies to take control of their leadership wheel.  Business leaders are human beings, first.  Then once human they begin to do their business work.  Business leaders are not above the rest of the crowd in the human condition.  In the end they are exactly the same as everyone else, human beings.      

Business leaders and the rest of the people in this world have a tendency to operate much in the same way.  Their human tendencies are as similar as anyone might expect.  The mere fact that those human tendencies are similar is often times the reason why so many business leaders fail to produce higher levels of success.  The human tendencies we produce can often times create lines of limits to our potential for success.  Failure can often come from the normal human conditions found in the business leader.  It becomes natural for the business leader to behave exactly the way they believe they should behave.  They allow their human tendencies to take over their leadership responsibilities.  They do what comes natural.

As a result, if something is too risky to introduce, or to perform well, their normal human tendencies take over and they avoid taking that risk.  Instead, they do what comes natural.  They act in the easy way.  And it is in this fashion that sometimes the business leader becomes too normal to support taking higher risks to produce greater success.  It is natural.  They do what comes natural, like everyone else.

Alan Greenspan is a perfect example of how the human condition, how our natural tendencies can take us down.  Even though he quietly escaped the public scrutiny of the disappointment expressed by Americans for the economic mess they have recently had to endure, his drive to be recognized as a great monetary policy maker went underground.  His goal to be greatly recognized failed.  As circumstances unfolded, that turns out to become very good news for him.  In the end, he escaped becoming one of the goats of the destruction.

As Greenspan was preparing his exit from the office he held he wanted so badly to go out with a memorable bang that would place his name in the lights of financial stardom.  Alan Greenspan wanted to be recognized as one of the 'greats' in the world of financial control.  Before he left the office as the Federal Reserve Czar, he arranged to produce and print more money to feed lower interest rates that he had hoped would spur an increase in potential economic growth that could be remembered for years beyond his time in office.

Unfortunately, his desire to become famous ran larger than his internal indications that something might be apt to go terribly wrong.  During a time when the investing world had developed new and unusual financial derivatives and complicated instruments; all of them designed to shift, leverage and run when the wholesale movement they created occurred.  Greenspan then infused too much new 'sub-supported' money into the economy that drove interest rates far too low to consequently support the wholesale activity that was beginning to occur.  This effect triggered the unraveling of the financial collapse.  The bubble was pricked!  As a result, the consumer could not figure out how to properly use the financial instruments introduced into the wholesale shifting of the money markets.  This consumer misunderstanding produced nothing in tangible and real products that were so desperately needed in order to help move the economy upward.  All it actually produced was the shifting of already capitalized money movements, turned into a new wholesale industry that found its way feeding on itself.  Consumers ran away.  Consumers could not figure out how they factored into this corporate plan to increase profits.  Hence, financial collapse.  This happens to be an economic lesson experts still have not figured out.  Consumers drive the end game...not the investors.  Smart people always seem to miss this component.  

Greenspan admits that in printing new money to eventually infuse into the markets during the time when complicated financial instruments were running out of check, might very well become the only real challenge experienced by the lipid rules of the housing and financial industries governing the paper flow of the mortgage and investment bubble.  Even so, with his own mindful self-warnings, he wanted so much to place his name above everyone else in that growth potential.  His natural tendencies took over.  He arranged our economic policies to work their ways into feeding the worst financial disaster this country has ever seen.  Consequently disrupting an already fragile world economy.  His business leadership knew better.  His natural tendencies took over.  His desire to be big won over his unique knowledge to know better.

Business leaders often times work their incredible magic in very wrong ways.  They want to succeed so badly that they often times get all caught up with their tendencies to win.  They become very much the same as you and I.  They work their way through life with a bent towards natural things.  They self-fulfill their human tendencies.  With that urge in mind, they find a way to destroy what they built.

Page two.

No Crystal Ball Here, Just Good Integrity.

We all know what Tiger Woods did wrong.  His mistake cost his business world about $110 Million and three mansions.  It was quite an investment mistake.  It not only hurt his balance sheet it also destroyed the game he loved so much.  I doubt seriously that Tiger Woods is as much about happy as he was before the tragedy arrived.  This is so much the case as many business leaders eventually discover.  Once they become natural with their human tendencies, they allow their leadership strengths to weaken enough to do some very wrong moves.  Those allowances often times will lead their financials into the darkness of some very bad results.  Bad financial results eventually become only part of the larger problem.  The larger problem arrives when the business leader loses heart, soul and character.  They lose their love for the game they play.  Once this kind of human tendency arrives, they self-fulfill the things that continue to support what is normally considered all wrong.  It's natural.

Great business leaders find out that they have a strong responsibility to prevent their natural human desires from taking full control of the steering wheel they hold.  It becomes evidently clear to them that higher levels of personal control are required.  In order for those great leaders to rise above the crowd with their business of production, they must also learn the art of rising above their personal desires to do what comes naturally.  Great leaders must work harder on becoming less influenced by the human urges we feel which try to surface in our lives from the natural tendencies we harbor inside.  Great leaders must learn how to control these tendencies much better than most.  It is in this control that the end results will reflect a different set of outcomes worth measuring.  The very good stuff actually comes from being very un-natural.

Success in business is often times timely.  It is often times, luck.  It is more times, happenstance.  However, it is always certain.  The great stuff in life always comes from doing great things.  Great things are not usually the result of natural things.

The business leaders who self-fulfill their natural tendencies are the business leaders who limit the great success they could otherwise enjoy.  The limits they produce come naturally delivered by the actions they were not able to avoid.  This is a concept that is not often taught in the best business schools money can buy.  Even though its results might have a huge bearing on how well a career may eventually turn out, the natural tendencies from within our humanity drive just about everything we do.  If those natural tendencies are not placed on notice, kept strictly 'in-check', they can easily get out of control and damage the success efforts any business leader could ever love to maintain or acquire.  The examples are everywhere.

Examine your tendencies.  Take a serious look at what they are, how they are produced and what kind of effect they may have on your path to success.  Evaluate the ways you can control your well being as you feel the urge to do what you think you want to do.  Prevent yourself from becoming controlled by your desire to serve the natural stuff your life believes it wants to live.  Self restraint, self control and self reliance are not normal conditions.  They are tendencies that require great personal effort.  They also become very good partners in serving the best business leaders while they work to discover how to do their leadership roles very well.

Know how our tendencies work.  It's natural; we self-fulfill our human tendencies...especially when we do not fully comprehend how they ultimately work.  Success comes from knowing more, especially when it is applied.

Until next time...