No Such Thing as Auto-Pilot and Other Myths

Many people in business like to work on things even when they are well known to be not working. Today let me share with you the 5 most common practices that don't work. Avoid them and you won't be having any chance of disappointments:

1. Auto-Pilot.  The myth people have is that pilots, once they put the plane on auto-pilot, have basically nothing to do during their flight hours. Nothing is further than the truth: even with the plane on auto-pilot, pilots have to go through their flight navigation plans, make notes on where they have passed and plan for landing and watch out for tubulences.  In short, they have to be on the alert and work all the time even when the plane is on auto-pilot.  Same for business.  Even if your business is as big as Apple, Facebook or Alibaba, you the CEO still have to clock in many hours of work everyday for there is simply no auto-pilot in life
2. Threat of Termination works.  This threat only works with those that find it difficult to look for jobs, and they are usually the non-performers.  The high performers can find jobs easily, so this threat will never work. But since they are high performers, why do you want to sack them?  
3. 50% Discount Will Win You Business. In fact if you lower your price by half, people will be scared and dare not do anything.  See our previous article on this
4. Productivity will be boosted when the output is higher.  Truth is productivity is defined as the ratio of output over input, so merely increasing output will not boost productivity unless you are using proportionately lesser input.  Like if we have 5 salespeople now producing $20 million sales annually, increasing sales to $25 million is not productive if that results in lower profit margin (resulting from higher selling cost or lower gross margin)
5. Promise of Destination Works.  We know it is the journey that gives us the happiness, not the destination.  So if you promise your people that they will get 3 months bonus when they work hard, your people will only be motivated if your journey is enjoyable and not suffering. 

By Andy Ng, International Business Coach and Trainer, who have trained over 81,131 people in 14 countries including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei, Maldives, China, Sri Lanka, Japan, Australia, Taiwan, USA and Mexico.  List of courses are at www.asiatrainers.com/SeminarsList.php Related articles:

1. Be a Great Boss, not Feared Boss
2. The meaning of your dreams
3. How to waste money on training
4. Making money from training
5. How to be a better manager and leader