Self-Discipline in Business
Part 2 of my Trilogy about Rules, Discipline, and Fairness
Introduction
This article is Part 2 from a trilogy of articles relating to the general rules of business conduct, self-discipline (in business), and finally a broader look at the concept of fairness in the Golden Rule.
Self-Discipline
The broad definition of self-discipline, especially as we understand it today, originated in the early 1500s. It meant the training and self-control needed to follow orders and act in accordance with rules.1
In a business context, that led to the question: what rules are supposed to be followed? My answer to that question was written In Part 1: The Rules of Business Conduct.
Here in Part 2, we will focus on the habits, behaviors, and activities which an entrepreneur should utilize on a personal level to increase his chances of success.
Typically, when talking about self-discipline, we focus on the aspects of will-power and self-control which we must individually exert to do what needs to be done, especially when it's difficult or when we don't feel like doing it.
I’ve come up with a list of important aspects of self-discipline which I think Newbie Entrepreneurs should consciously try to use while starting their business. I’ve grouped the different items into three groups re Business: Leadership, Direction, Skills
The list below covers the important items which we will discuss.
BUSINESS LEADERSHIP
Be the leader: A sword must cut sharply.
Professional standards: Know how to behave
Acquire skills & knowledge: Keep improving
Emotional Regulation: manage negative emotions; do not let them sabotage
Knowing when to exit: Making tough emotional calls.
BUSINESS DIRECTION
Goal setting: Where am I going? Why?
Prioritization: What should I be working on right now?
Focus: Effectively execute priorities.
Productivity & Deliverables: Achieving tangibles vs busy work.
BUSINESS SKILLS
Fiscal discipline: Conserving resources.
Business accounting: Keep your eye on the cash.
Time management: Balancing all the juggling balls.
Licenses & official procedures: Don’t let officialdom shut you down.
BUSINESS LEADERSHIP
In this section we’ll discuss the self-discipline required to provide the necessary leadership as de facto captain of a fledgling business organization.
Be the leader
A leader is not because of name, rank, or designation only, but rather by action and decision. The primary requisite of a leader is: Doing, Daring, Deciding2. This requires guts, fortitude, and discipline. Many Newbie Entrepreneurs fail to step up to these demands. They hold the sword of decision-making, but fail to use it. They are afraid to choose. They waffle and procrastinate.
A sword must cut sharply. And after it cleaves, the result cannot be reversed nor undone. This is frightening. But this is what being a leader means.
Some areas where the Newbie Entrepreneur has to step up involve:
Boundary setting – sometimes with friends and family, sometimes with self: separating business from personal is a frequent mistake requiring discipline to prevent its occurrence in all areas: time, purse, budget, expenses.
Not getting swayed by "pet projects", personal whims/fancy, nor likes/dislikes: This is hard even for seasoned executives. Motorola’s Iridium Project essentially sunk the company and led to its eventual breakup.
Do what is required for the business, not just what is pleasant or fun or interesting. Some younger newbie entrepreneurs can have a hard time with this one also.
Professional standards
Know how to behave in a business context. In Part 1, we discussed the expectations of a business professional. Here we admonish that it takes self-discipline to align oneself with the professional standards. This refers to dress, speech, comportment, emotional stability, clarity of communication, promptness, and preparation.
The very first thing taught in my Dale Carnegie Sales Training was: “Promptness is the first sign of responsibility.” I had been lackadaisical about being on time for meetings. But the disrespect which this shows for valuing the time (and courtesy!) of one’s counterpart is enormous and never forgotten. If you’re not at least 15 minutes early for an appointment, you are late.
Grow up. Be a professional. Stop pretending that such standards are beneath you, or they’re an imposition on your cultural identity, or that you’re different, or that you’re too independent etc etc. It does not matter if you think these expectations derive from a particular culture and time (say NW European 19th Century).
The standards of a business professional apply to everyone and of course they derive from economically and industrially powerful cultures, no matter what point of history you look at. Such is the nature of human society anywhere. If you want to succeed, you must talk the same language and conduct yourself in the same expected professional manner.
Acquire skills & knowledge
Keep improving yourself, especially when starting a business. You should know more about your field of business than anyone else. If you do not know the history of your field, you come off as lightweight, not serious (a joke even), and certainly not ready to be trusted with serious business opportunities. Often on Project Runway, for example, contestants (especially those with potential) were often derided and demoted for failure to know Twentieth Century fashion trends, styles, and icons. And rightly so.
You should also know what is going on in your field in all major markets: trends, challenges, upstarts, new inventions or products, etc.
Emotional Regulation
Emotional regulation refers to the capacity to manage negative emotions and not let them derail your considerable efforts to succeed. Many young entrepreneurs are unable to do this, so they sabotage their own hard work. You must analyze yourself on a frequent basis so that you can uproot these tendencies to hurt yourself. I’ll mention two main areas below.
Procrastination & Laziness
Procrastination is the tendency to put things off, to delay, to deprecate importance, to whittle down priority. Laziness – both mental and physical – although similar to procrastination, is the avoidance of expending effort and of encountering difficulties.
Both of these are a constant brake on your forward progress. They usually show up regarding scheduling, planning, task accomplishment, thoroughness in completing deliverables (aw, that’s good enough…), to name a few.
The Tug Towards Average
“Success is hastened or delayed by one's habits. It is not your passing inspirations or brilliant ideas so much as your everyday mental habits that control your life.” (P. Yogananda)
Most people are average. That’s not a slur; it’s a simple restatement of the meaning of average. On a standard bell curve3 (of whatever characteristic you wish to consider), 95% of the population falls within +/- 2σ of the mean point, and this range is thus considered to be the average (diagram below).
You don’t want to think in bell curves? The human brain stereotypes the world around it by exactly this mechanism. The only way humans can deal with enormous and continuous sensory input is by the brain’s ability to abstract, stereotype, and dismiss-the-background4 in the world around it.
And average is not exceptionalism. Exceptionalism (i.e. success, in both the business and professional sports context) is by definition far off at the edges of a Bell Curve, in 7σ-land. For example, less than 1% of Division-I College Basketball players get called up to the NBA, and less than 10% of NBA players5 would be considered noteworthy or exceptional.
What’s my point? Average gets you business failure. You must be exceptional in all areas and through self-discipline fight your inner tendencies which push you, compel you, drive you back to the mean.
Knowing when to exit
Sometimes you have to pull the plug. Drain the pool. Open the parachute. Call it quits (for now).
Making tough emotional calls like this is exceedingly difficult and requires self-discipline to face facts and do what’s best.
BUSINESS DIRECTION
By this we mean, self-discipline relating to directing the business (i.e.: giving direction to stakeholders in the business).
Goal setting
As leader, you are captain of the ship. Both captain and crew should know Where the ship is going? Otherwise, how do you know when you’ve arrived? And Why is it going there? It takes discipline to set a specific goal with metrics, a timeline, standards, and tangible deliverables along the way.
Prioritization
Once one knows the Goals, the next question is: What should I be working on right now to move toward the goal? Prioritization is the map that directs choices. It shows you the most important destinations. You need prioritization to choose the right things to focus on.
Note that we’re still talking only about self-discipline. There are many steps from a process standpoint which take place to make all of these things happen. But as a discipline, it’s necessary for the entrepreneur to make sure she personally is aligned with these items.
Focus
Focus is about effectively executing priorities.
"How do I effectively work on what I've decided is important?" Focus is the act of driving towards that destination without getting sidetracked. Without it, even the most important tasks might never get done. Focus is about time management, concentration, and tuning out distractions.
Productivity & Deliverables
Achieving tangibles vs busy work. One can be busy but not productive nor effective. Having the self-discipline to continually be achieving tangible results (productivity) which are the deliverables towards goal achievement involves self control.
BUSINESS SKILLS
These are fundamental areas requiring self-discipline and relate more to personal skills.
Fiscal discipline
Your Mantra: Conserve resources; save, not spend. Cash is the lifeblood of a business. When it is depleted, the business is finished. But for a newbie entrepreneur just starting out with a pocketful of capital, it’s easy (and fun!) to spend, spend, SPEND! It takes a huge amount of discipline to minimize expenses, postpone purchases, and forgo mimicing Steve-Jobs perfection in all things prototyped.
Business accounting
Keep your eye on the cash. Bookkeeping and accounting will seem like the most boring, least interesting, painful activities imaginable designed to torture your exciting entrepreneurial mind into a sticky blob.
You will have strong urges to either delegate it (bookkeeping), postpone it (procrastinate), or sweep it under the rug. That’s why this is in the self-discipline list.
You absolutely cannot do this. You have to know, at least weekly, where your business stands in terms of revenue, expenses, and cash in the bank. You have to know your cash flow and near-term demands on that cash.
Time management
Time management, an expression of self-discipline for busy entrepreneurs, is about managing the workday to finish priority tasks on time without burnout or wasted resources. It's a constant juggling act to ensure every business priority task is achieved, demanding strong abilities in organization, logistics, delegation, efficiency, and discipline.
Time management is the Balancing of all the juggling balls.
Licenses & official procedures
Don’t let officialdom shut you down. It takes self-discipline to comply with official requirements.
Make sure you have taken the time to learn what licenses, bonds, regulations, permits, fees, taxes, and registrations will be required for your business, prior to starting your business. Know when you have to apply for these, what the lead times are, what the penalties are for tardiness or non-compliance. Make sure your business plan and startup capital include these investments. If you have to delay, know what grace periods you will be allowed.
In Part 3 we will speculate about the universality of the ideas of Fairness and the Golden Rule. Might even chat a bit about karma!
etymonline.com, DISCIPLINE: “In English, the sense of "military training" is attested from late 15c., via the notion of "training to follow orders and act in accordance with rules;" that of "orderly conduct as a result of training" is from c. 1500.”
Bogue, E. Grady. The Enemies of Leadership. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978.
Sharma, Rishi. “Why is Normal Distribution Bell Shaped?”, Medium, Jan 12, 2019; https://medium.com/@rishisharma2628/why-is-normal-distribution-bell-shaped-80a784955e92
Dismiss the background: The brain actively separates visual data – for example – into a small set of foreground objects (having current importance) versus a large set of objects deemed unimportant and thus relegated to the background. This process focuses attention and cognitive resources on whatever is identified as being in the foreground. The brain does this with all sensory data: visual, auditory, tactile, etc.
Ten percent (of NBA players) represents about 7 x 10-9 % of the world’s population, which is in the range of a 7σ probability; exceptional.