Personal Development Model of Business

It is said that the business is an extension of the business owner. Therefore, all habits, patterns of behavior and limitations in a business are created by the limitations within the owner.

The biggest burden of a business owner is being stuck merely in “potential”, mired in personal impediments like doubt, overwhelm, laziness, brain fog, illness, domestic unrest, etc that prevent the unleashing of true genius. In that sense, the business only grows in tandem with the business owner’s development!

I’m in the process of realizing how many of these impediments I’ve had to overcome through my own life. It was a gradual and relatively painful process. However, it is imperative to know that each one has a strategy for breakthrough, and everything lies in the nature of development.

I’ll use a parallel model of human developmental from the great Jean Piaget, to map it to business development.

Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiversity/en/5/50/Development_table.png

Consider the four stages. I will consider that the sensorimotor stage is like forming a new business. To do this we need to have a “meta” mode of thinking. This is often absent from people who are merely employed because they don’t get to truly think about the set up and operational requirements. Even if they were in a large organization, the ability to bring that organizational know-how into a birthing stage is challenging. As a startup or solopreneur, you must get a sense of awareness of the business, and learn to act intentionally as well. In my opinion, this stage of thinking is about learning the building blocks of business and familiarization with how businesses start.

The pre-operational stage is probably just as easily mapped on. The nature of “business language” needs to be defined. I believe that in order to build the right business, one will need to create the right vocabulary for business terms. In a sense, the very series of actions in the business needs to be clearly defined. It is one thing to put up a “post” on Facebook, for instance. But that “post” is more valuable to the business owner than the average casual user. Also, without 2nd positioning, it will be challenging for individual startups to begin with the customer in mind. Often, the egocentric way of thinking will prevent the business from taking off. I believe that this can only be clarified through regular conversation about business in general, receiving tons of feedback, being comfortable with the unknown and being willing to experiment. This is typically the case for children learning language where they don’t really care if their pronunciation is right. It does matter that they blabber their way to effectiveness. In a sense, failing is a form of “exercise”. Maybe that analogy works in business, too.

In reading the phrase “classifies objects by a single feature“, I can’t help but to realize how many individuals do this. Their idea of marketing for example, is “marketing to everyone”. Unfortunately not everything that moves eats the same thing. Dimensions in marketing need to be further classified into sub-categories in order for the business to serve its customers well.

For the Concrete Operational stage, it reminds me of when businesses actually create their tangible workflows. This can only happen with the meta awareness of the fact that you are in the business (provider of the product or service) and need to transit to working on the business (thinking about how to provide the product or service and elevating the business overall). The challenge here is that many of my clients hire me for this stage, but they may actually be underdeveloped in business at stages 1 and 2. As a result, there is a need to achieve metacognition about their gaps and learn how to fill them in. Many are unable to do this because they don’t know how to create concrete operational sequences, but the solution to this is based on a combination of understanding the requirements of the customer and also experimentation.

For the Formal Operational stage, what comes to mind is the fact that new entrepreneurs often jump to this stage of operations at the beginning. They are caught up in ideas and excitement rather than being grounded. If you are an adult brain in a child’s body, that is exactly what will happen!

So, I am continuing to evolve the link between developmental coaching for business owners so that those who want to transit from employment into business can seek out a proper transition period to arrive at the outcome necessary for success. Connect with me, and let’s have a conversation.