How did you react when you heard Australia had avoided a recession?

Ken Wall, visiting lecturer on future leadership, creativity and productive thinking in the MBA program at Monash University, believes that our reaction to big news such as this affects our productivity and our capacity to lead staff successfully.

Wall, creator and CEO of The Thinking Network, a consultancy which started in the UK in 1978, says business owners fall into four categories: ‘that’s great’; ‘we were lucky’; ‘they fiddled the books’ or ‘it won’t last’.

Wall says that people in the ‘that’s great’ group are probably already successful and can see a route through the doom and gloom. You are an optimist, you believe that you have some control over what happens and you are determined not to be a victim of the downturn. This attitude is absolutely vital in business at any time – but especially now.

He says that attitude also has an affect on staff. “Demonstrate to staff that you believe that you can get through the tough times and they will believe the same thing. Believe that you can involve them in making it happen. Remember, they will have the best ideas so capture them and develop them by giving them time and teaching them how to think productively,” he says.

The second group are the ‘we were lucky’ group”. This is the group of people who think the first group will have been lucky if they actually do well,” he says. He advises this group to try and stay open to new experiences through networking, visiting clients, talking to staff or just going for a walk.

The third group heard about the recession news and think ‘they fiddled the books’.
These people don’t trust the figures and they don’t trust people. He advises people in this group to start any relationship with the assumption that the other person is ‘one of the good guys’. “OK, so you won’t be right all the time; I’ve been let down three times in the past 30 years in business, so it’s not a bad ratio,” says Wood.

The last contingent are very negative and fit into the ‘it won’t last’ group. “The fascinating thing about this group is that they only say this about good news! If something bad happens their typical reaction is ‘I told you so’. They complain about everything,” he says. “They are very hard to cheer up.”

Wood says these doomsayers usually fail. “It sounds very Darwinian but these people tend to rely on what they know. So they do the same thing again and again even if they don’t get good results. It is the creative people in the top group who have the best approach because they are more creative and can come up with hundreds of options to problems.

He says he sees the best results from people in the middle groups. “You can shift their thinking so they become more positive and creative,” he says.

“It takes half a day to rewire the brain. Then you have to look at previous experiences and how they affect you and then do work on reinforcing cognitive experiences. So it can take a while but it’s worth it because you don’t want to be doing the same thing next year as you did this year.”