Why Entrepreneurs are lucky!

 

 

Editor”s Note:

 

 

Janet  L. Sernack  is one of our contributors from Israel, she gained her consulting, education, facilitation, training and executive coaching skills, from over 30 years of experience in the manufacturing and retailing and learning and development businesses to Australia’s top 100 companies as Compass Learning Pty Ltd.She now resides on the Mediterranean Coast, in Israel where she founded an Israeli Start-Up, ImagineNation, which is an imaginative, generative & provocative global learning & development company that allows coaches, managers, leaders and organisations to develop their innovative and entrepreneurial leadership capability through enterprise gamification (The Start-Up Game) innovation labs and online learning programs (The Coach for Innovators ICF CCE Certified Program).One of the things Janet said to me recently was” how come everyone is talking about Innovation and no one talks about being Innovative”Do join her 45 minute free webinar,* “Change your game – become an innovative leader and start-up entrepreneur”*,  Thursday, 11th July, at1.00pm PDT Los Angeles, 4.00pm EDT New York, 8.00pm GMT London and 11.00pm Israel, and on Friday, 12th July at 6.00am Sydney and Melbourne or join our next Coach for Innovators Certified Program starting 16th July. http://www.imaginenation.co.il/programs/

 During the round four of The Start-Up Game™, a business simulation that fosters innovation and entrepreneurship, players are required to randomly select a number of boxes on a digitized screen.   Depending on their “luck”, their choice of boxes will result on one of three options: they will increase the monetary value of their Start-Up, they will go out of business, or their Start-Up will fail. All players are aware that, to complete the game, they will end up with one of these three outcomes.

This means that the “Luck Factor” will be in full force!

As games are often metaphors for what occurs in ‘real life’, some of us, when building a Start-Up business will face these same three outcomes. We will be challenged by a number of external factors that will either ‘make or break’ us; we may experience expediential growth from an unexpected source, we may have to face combative competition that cause us to exit from a customer segment or market, or we may fail due to a cash flow or capability challenge.

In the Start-Up Game™ the facilitator deliberately provokes and challenges players with opportunities to make ‘deals’, this may be a cash offer to influence the team to change their selection decision, a generous cash offer to buy their Start-Up outright and exit the game,  or a significant cash offer to a player to leave their Start-Up and join another team.

Teams are encouraged to actively debate their decisions, and it is during this process, that the “Luck Factor” occurs.

Knowing that innovators and entrepreneurs embody growth mindsets they realise the value of challenging themselves and the importance of their efforts.

Having this positive mindset actually creates success and good “luck”.

In ‘The Luck Factor’Richard Wiseman reveals four main differences between the lives of lucky and unlucky people:

1.   Lucky people create, notice and act upon the chance opportunities in their lives. In contrast, unlucky people rarely have these sorts of experiences, or they meet people who have a negative effect on their lives.

2.   Lucky people make successful decisions by using their intuition and gut feelings. Unlucky peoples decisions tend to result in despair and failure.

3.   Lucky people’s expectations about the future help them fulfill their dreams and ambitions. Unlucky people are the exact opposite.

4.   Lucky people are able to transform their bad luck into good fortune. Unlucky people lack this ability and their bad luck causes nothing but upset and ruin.

These four principles set the context for round four of the Start-Up Game™, despite having so many random factors outside of their control, players will successfully complete the game,  if they take charge of the “luck “ factor by:

–   Deeply observing, listening for possibilities and actively debating to reveal opportunities behind the deals offered to them.

–   Exploring, investigating and challenging each other’s gut and intuition around the deals.

–   Staying true to their Start-Up team’s vision and expectations of success and taking positive action to elicit more creative and potentially beneficial deals.

Finally, the Start-Up Game™ reinforces the fact that successful innovators and entrepreneurs have growth mindsets and the “luck” to ‘see’ and act on opportunities. They challenge the process by taking calculated risks through intuitive and gut decision making, validated by deep generative debate. They hold true to their vision and expectations of success and are then perseverance and resilient in the face of adversity, failure and challenge.

So take a moment to consider what can you do to enhance your entrepreneurial and innovators “luck”?

For more information about The Start-Up Game™ please visit http://www.imaginenation.co.il/the-start-up-game/