A traditional business approach based on the “goal-setting” principle assumes setting steps which we have to take in order to reach our established goals. But what if we fail more often, are late with tasks realization or we are not that satisfied with those goals we set, which after some time turn out t be pointless. Here’s where “Fear-Setting” comes to help.
Setting Fears
“Fear-setting” is a method consisting in setting fears (as the name suggests). It assumes that one of the factors which motivate and drive people’s behavior is avoiding losses and factors which can generate them. The same goes for enterprises or organizations.
Success Is About A Good Plan
Once or twice a month, in order to regain a peace of mind, you should set goals focused on fears. If you prepare a list of things which can happen to you, try to prioritize them. Define not only the probability of their occurrence but also the intensity with which you interpret the fact when it happens to you.
Here are the examples of companies’ fears (in scale from 1 – little fear, to 5 – substantial fear):
- Loss of accounting liquidity – probability (2), power of impact (5)
- Loss of employees – probability (3), power of impact (2)
- Loss of clients due to their change to the largest competitor – probability (4), power of impact (5)
- etc.
Create The List of Solutions
Once you have your fears defined, try to create a list of potential solutions. Take a look at others’ experience, analyze risk factors, think which solutions will be best for you. But you need one more thing to that. Create a procedure, rule which will help you get out of the dilemma if one of your fears happens to you. Thanks to this you will sleep well.
The Inactivity Cost
Many people give up on taking any actions just because they assume that nothing bad happens. However, to the inactivity cost, you can add not only financial costs which you can carry but also emotional cost or time which you can lose. Nobody but us knows best how much time entrepreneurs spend on their tasks accomplishment. Our app, TimeCamp, helps almost automatically register time spent on particular projects (with just one click entrepreneurs can switch between implemented tasks) which results in surprising conclusions visible in reports of these tasks, visited websites, time spent on particular documents or apps.
Once you define your fears and create a plan on how to fight them, you will be able to successfully reach all your goals. And then fear-setting will be equal to goal-setting.