Stretchy Thinking – How to Engage Your Staff to Strengthen Your Business via Rebecca Jones
There are so many people with great ideas for creating their own business, or alternatively how to improve the way the company they work at operates. In fact, given the right circumstances and encouragement almost everyone has creativity and innovate ideas inside of them, just waiting to be unleashed. The problem is the system that so many of us grew up in and then live in later in life, does not encourage thinking outside the box, or doing things differently. Too many of us are also held back by worrying what others think of us and how they may judge us if our ideas fail. With all of these issues comes a huge amount of wasted potential!
When we are in school we are taught to do our homework, listen to the concepts that teachers tell us and accept most of the things we are told as truth. Within this system there is little room given for students to be creative or try to think up new ways of doing things. In fact standing out is actively discouraged and students that don’t do well within this traditional framework of learning are too often told they will be failures in life, which is a massive injustice.
This narrow minded viewpoint becomes ingrained within people from a young age that they must fall in line, always do what they are told and only then they can go onto live a happy, productive life. They then carry this thought process into their adult life and go on to work for companies and businesses, many of which reinforce this mindset. There are too many business owners and leaders who are so focused on profits, that they don’t allow their employees to try new ideas, so as to avoid them wasting time on things that could possibly fail. So once again, like in school days, employees are worried about being judged, or worse sacked by their bosses so they stick to the status quo.
At the recent RDO8 event at the Don Carlos Leisure Resort & Spa, Rebecca Jones, motivational business speaker and author, spoke with great insight and conviction about the pitfalls of discouraging people from being able to think creatively, whether that is in school, the workplace or many other areas of life. Rebecca spoke with great passion about this concept at RDO8, especially as she is able to draw on personal experience of some of these dilemmas.
@RedShoeBizWoman you do not need your staff to be flexible, you need them to be stretchy! #RDO8 pic.twitter.com/zqdwV6VCvj
— RDO Official (@rdoofficial) 12 September 2017
Back in her school days she was failing and therefore told by some of her teachers that she was unlikely to amount to anything. The school system as it is today though, has barely changed in many respects for hundreds of years. It simply doesn’t cater well at all for creativity or anyone who doesn’t fit well into the traditional style of learning that still exists. Now though, due to massive economic and technological shifts, it is imperative that both schools and businesses are ready for the huge changes taking place.
People learn and think in many different ways, so the style of learning and teaching that is forced upon students in most countries is not suitable for many, and Rebecca was no exception. What was different about Rebecca though, was a drive to succeed, despite what these teachers had so wrongly said to her. At age 19 she started her own business and since then has had a very successful and creative business career and life, despite some setbacks and failures along the way.
Over the past two and a half decades since then, Rebecca has successfully started and run four different businesses and is now focussed on encouraging others to change their mentality to achieve more success in the world of business and work, by embracing enterprise and following their ambitions. One of her main objectives within her current line of work as motivational business speaker and author, is to create a culture of change within businesses that need to adapt to the realities of today’s economic environment. She is passionate about encouraging business leaders, such as those that attended RDO8 to involve their staff in having new ideas to help their business grow.
Mr Awkward, Mr Comfort Zone and Mrs Happy – how to make your staff stretchy by Rebecca Jones at #RDO8 pic.twitter.com/t7VPGmNe7o
— Jackie Murphy (@jackieannmurphy) 12 September 2017
Too often business leaders don’t trust their staff and have the mentality that all the big important changes must stem from the top. The same mentality that is perpetuated in school continues to the business world that thinking outside the box is wrong and that failure should be actively discouraged. Instead Rebecca believes, though her own experience as a business owner and through helping many other businesses to adapt and flourish, that the best route to success is through giving all team members room to think up new ideas and not be shamed if these don’t work out as expected. In fact, when a new idea doesn’t work exactly as planned, it shouldn’t be seen as a failure but rather a lesson to be learned from and improved upon.
Develop staff that are more innovative, engaged and more enterprising, to build a more sustainable future for your organisation #Enterprise pic.twitter.com/C9ByMq6IEW
— Rebecca Jones (@RedShoeBizWoman) 18 September 2017
To accompany her presentation and through drawing on her years of experience and knowledge Rebecca has written a book: “ENTERPRISE WITHIN™ – A corporate enterprise system to develop stretchy staff for organisational growth”. The concept of stretchy staff means staff who are willing and open to adapt to change in order to help the business they work for grow and increase profits. As Rebecca explained during her engaging, fun and informative presentation, in order for staff to feel fully able to offer new ideas, they have to feel they can trust the business owners to listen to them with an open mind. Therefore as much as staff need to be able to adapt to change, business owners, such as those at RDO8 need to become ‘enterprise enablers’, i.e. trusting the judgement of their team and allowing them to put forward new ideas, even if they don’t always work.
You can find out more about Rebecca Jones, her business and her book on her website: http://www.rebeccajones.biz/. You can also connect with her via her social media channels:
If you would like to discuss anything with RDO regarding this blog post or other relevant topics, then simply add the hashtag #RDO8 or #RDOdigital to your tweet. Alternatively search #RDO8 or #RDOdigital on Twitter to see what else we’ve been discussing and you can easily get involved in the conversation.
The RDO8 conference 2017 was sponsored by CLC World Resorts & Hotels, Diamond Resorts International, Interval International and RCI at the Platinum level, and Dial An Exchange, Light Enterprises and Shawbrook Bank at the Gold level. We thank them for their support.
