FEAR (fîr)

revised 3-7-09

The one thing that can infiltrate and poison a healthy business is fear. Fear in and of itself is based in the thought of loss. Fear is negative. When you are in fear, you are focused on scarcity. You are afraid of losing something, afraid of being hurt or experiencing pain. Decisions made solely to avoid loss or pain are rarely made with a clear head. Being afraid, often results in the concealment of the truth and when the truth of any situation is hidden, good decisions are hard to come up with.

On the other hand, fear is good. It is an early detection system. A warning of an imbalance in the situation at hand. Fear is a great indicator of potential problems, but is not a foundation or basis for business decisions.

Most businesses that experience fear also have the ability to experience growth. In the US, businesses operate within an economy that is essentially based on Capitalism. Capitalism is exemplified as being a competitive “free” market that contains the mechanism to create growth. Growth in an economy is generally considered good, though in essence it is change, and is neither inherently good or bad. When economies are in a growth cycle, it is usually built on trust. It is built on a collective conscience that believes good things are happening. When participants in growth begin to violate this trust, it is most often the result of greed. This violation inevitably causes trust to be lost and fear is introduced. It is when fear materializes that the system goes astray.

If fear is an indicator of imbalance, and if fear can be overcome, and if we understand how fear appears, then it is important to know when fear will present itself.

Within business, fear doesn’t start during decline, it first appears when all seems well. It startes in a small area and spreads like poison and infiltrates parts of a buisiness that have no reason to be afraid. One way fear shows up is in the form of paying more for goods and services (including real estate) than the real value of the product or property. This fear grows and causes an acceleration of growth that is not supported by reality. This shift in product value can cause economic acceleration and is an early signal that fear is in the air.
What causes goods and services to be purchased at a price that is more than the real value? Scarcity. Scarcity is fear in the form of not being able to obtain an object or item desired. Fear and scarcity breeds greed. This greed fuels scarcity by spreading fear and benefits those that are inciting fear. Do we really value fear?

The downturn in the economy has given us a great opportunity to reflect. It is an opportunity to discover where we have failed and to change our past actions into a new way of doing business. Ultimately the failure has been in our value system. The solution to this problem is to create a new foundation based on values that not only "do no harm", but are also "intended to do good". This change allows a course to be set to "do good" and is the foundation for the Progression.