Business owners and leaders are no strangers to the grieving process and its debatable five stages (Denial, Anger, Negotiation, Depression, and Acceptance). Businesses have to maintain a continuum of change to sustain themselves against the ever increasing intensity and speed of market innovation and entrepreneurial impact
Denial and anger are easy to spot. They occur with the initial feedback and then confirmation that your business just got juked by a competitor.
Negotiation is a weird duck. It is usually internal. In some cases, particularly in micro businesses, God gets pulled into it. The most common form is negotiating with the messenger that things really aren’t as bad as they look (truth is they are many times worse).
Depression is characterized by inaction with outward manifestations of doom and gloom.
The acceptance stage is earmarked with the emergence of a leader you gets the commitment back and builds the concentration to get up and start moving.
The gatekeeper to acceptance is “defending the problem”. The “yeah but . . .” and “everyone has this . . .” and “we can’t do anything about it” are the voice of the gatekeeper. The most ludicrous was a VP of Marketing/Sales who was quick to proclaim “We can’t make them buy from us!” They probably hadn’t read their job description lately.
While denial is a comfortable stage in the change process, getting past the gatekeeper of acceptance is often the most difficult challenge. Defense of the problems is faulty logic. It usually takes a second party (like a customer) or some third party to get one past it by adding undeniable facts that cannot be denied or ignored. So if you find yourself defending a problem, you are stuck in neutral. Get HELP! Otherwise a savvy turnaround specialist will recognize it and walk away with all that you have worked so hard to build for a song.
