Zentrepreneurs

Successfully materializing good ideas into great results requires the ability to combine spiritual well-being and positive thinking. In Zentrepreneur, award-winning business consultant John Murphy provides business professionals with the tools to overcome self-imposed limitations and resistance to create a new level of leadership. Sharing both his own stories of success and failure and examples from companies across the globe, Murphy empowers entrepreneurs to break through what confines them and awaken their inner zentrepreneur. He provides a how-to guide for creating on organizational culture of innovation, fearlessness, and success.

WHAT IF?

“Zenergy” is the spiritual life force that radiates from the soul. Every single person on this earth has zenergy, but only a few have the courage to face it. These few are the zentrepreneurs. They approach life with an open and positive mind, listening to their dreams and considering their ideas without fear or self-criticism.

As successful zentrepreneurs have figured out, ideas are abundant; many ideas tend to be lost, however, because people do not know how to turn them into action. Personal egos dominated by factors such as competition, greed, and pride tend to force ideas away from consciousness before action can even be contemplated. These negative, productivity-reducing factors must be eliminated if people are to lead fearlessly and experience zenergy.

Zenergy is an emotional intelligence that requires an ability to surrender to a higher power. To experience the power of zenergy, a person can do several things. One of these things is meditation, which is the act of quieting the mind and letting go of mental and emotional baggage. Zenergy can also be achieved through contemplation, which is the process of suspending analysis, criticism, and judgment. For organizations, an effective method of turning ideas into action is using kaizen. Kaizen is “good change,” and zentrepreneurs know how to accelerate this change by using an open and contemplative mind to ask questions such as:

*What if we try this?

*What if we change this?

*What if we stop this?

Successful zentrepreneurs realize that asking “what if?” questions allow them to see the multitude of ideas that surrounds them. By releasing their resistance, zenergy begins to flow.

WHY?

Asking “what if?” is the first step in allowing zenergy to flow. It is the fundamental key to opening the mind and generating good change. The second step of asking “why?” allows zentrepreneurs to utilize their intuition as they ponder why they do what they do. It also allows them to find root causes, gain more understanding, and locate opportunities.

The “what if?” questions help ideas to flow, but putting time and energy into meaningless projects reduces zenergy. Zentrepreneurs must determine which of their many ideas are worth pursuing, and there are a few tools that they can utilize to locate root causes, understanding, and opportunity. One such tool is the “5 Whys” technique. The “5 Whys” technique is a root cause analysis tool to help zentrepreneurs find meaningful opportunities for change. This technique requires that a zentrepreneur ask “why?” five times, getting to a deeper level each time, to sustainably solve problems and avoid common errors.

Zentrepreneurs can also utilize a baseline analysis to determine the health and stability of their organizations. A baseline analysis looks at facts and data on issues such as customer and market information, organizational information, support systems information, and financial information. It allows zentrepreneurs to see where in their organizations the major causes of problems lie and allows for measurement of progress and accountability. In a baseline analysis, a skilled team of experts provides zentrepreneurs and their organizations with an in-depth look at significant changes that can be made.

Although these tools help zentrepreneurs and their teams locate opportunities for change, an idea can only turn into a great result if it is supported. To gain credibility, zentrepreneurs must know their audience. This can be achieved by getting the facts about the audience’s problems or needs, quantifying those facts, and thinking about the perceptions that the audience has of them and their idea. Further, a Force Field Analysis can be used to build credibility. The Force Field Analysis lists all of the forces that could be for or against an idea, which helps a zentrepreneur plan countermeasures for overcoming any opposition that could be received during the idea pitch. When conducting a Force Field Analysis, zentrepreneurs must ask:

*Why do this?

*What is the value in doing this?

*Why not do this?

*What are the obstacles in doing this?

In addition to credibility, zentrepreneurs build an organizational culture accepting of change by possessing courage, having belief, taking ownership in their ideas, being responsible and accountable for their ideas, relying on intuition, taking initiative, and showing perseverance and optimism.