Cultivating a Growth Mindset @ Sistema.bio
Is it possible to foresee what you could
accomplish with a few years of passion, toil, and training? The answer
is “Yes”. It isn’t some hypothetical
situation, dependent on any manner of factors from genes to environment. It’s a
mindset. And it’s the one you cultivate every day at Sistema.bio.
Sistema.bio India is a social enterprise that
provides smallholder dairy farmers with anaerobic digestion (Biogas) technology,
service and financing that allows them to increase agricultural productivity
and net income, while improving the environmental sustainability of their
farms.
Sistema.bio has been trying to overcome the
challenges for development of biogas potential in India. Despite the
advancement of anaerobic digestion technology, the rural India suffers from
drawbacks such as low methane yields, incomplete bioconversion, process
instability and economic non-viability largely due to wrong implementation
designs and poor service networks. Additionally, lack of end user productive
applications is a major challenge to large scale adoption.
While evaluating Sistema.bio as my next career
option in Jan 2019, I came across this young super energetic guy, Alex Eaton
who had a voracious appetite for learning, constantly seeking out the kind of
input that he can metabolize into constructive plan and with a mindset to building
a Biogas sales model via public-private partnerships, took me no time to accept
the offer. My journey to build a growth mindset in this company started at this
very moment.
In some time, I understood the challenge and quickly
realised that a new approach would be needed to address the market needs.
Meeting my sales colleagues, I also felt the need to re-build a spirited sales team
which can overcome market hurdles and achieve desired goals.
I’ve witnessed people in my previous organisations,
who have this one consuming goal of proving themselves, in their careers, and
in their relationships. Such people have “Fixed Mindsets” and they negatively impact
growth plans.
Here at Sistema.bio, when I started observing
things as mutable, the situation gave me a way to a larger picture. The consequences
of my belief that intelligence and personality can be developed rather than
being immutably engrained traits, showed me the path to start working with my sales
leaders on cultivating their mindset for growth
A “growth mindset,” as I
call it, is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a tendency to believe that
we can grow. A growth mindset thrives on challenge and sees failure “not as
evidence of unintelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for
stretching our existing abilities.”
Our mindset stems from our own set of powerful beliefs. Thankfully,
beliefs can be changed when they no longer serve us to achieve our goals. This
practically happened within Sistema.bio Team India when the route-to-market was
redefined, and more focus was given to public-private partnerships than
existing Direct-to-Home approach. A large portion of my team members had to challenge
their beliefs, while some of them continued investing their energies in looking
smart, many of them took the route of learning and developing to embrace new challenges.
I took support of Sistema.bio leadership and applied SIX methods to nurture
growth mindset of my sales team and make them see “a world of new possibilities”
1.
Create a New Compelling Belief – “The view you adopt
for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life” are the famous words
of C.S. Dweck. We started the year 2020, with a new compelling belief about Sistema.bio
growth potential in India and how sales and marketing teams can achieve this
potential with their talents and skills.
2.
View Failure as a path to growth – I always believed
that, failure is the time to apply extra effort to significantly improve your
results. The fear from failure is something which needs to go out if you have built
a growth mindset. During open sessions with Sistema.bio sales leaders, failures
were told to be a part of their journey to achieve their goals.
3.
Catapult your Self-Awareness – Sistema.bio promotes a
culture of transparent feedbacks & reviews. This helped sales team in
realizing their gifts and talents and simultaneously comprehend their strengths
& Weaknesses
4.
Convert yourself into an Inquisitive Learner – Unlearning is the
best way to optimize and change yourself. I cultivated a culture of asking more
questions in Sistema.bio and being more curious about everything we see.
5.
Learn to hear your fixed mindset “voice.” – Every month in sales
review managers were told to hear their inner voices. They were told that once they
know they have a fixed mindset; they need to anticipate its voice in advance. They
need to question themselves “Can I do this?”, “What if I fail?”, “Can I listen
to criticism?” It’s the voice that undermines so much of what we do; the inner
critic that judges us and our work.
6.
Cultivate a sense of purpose. – Always keep a greater
sense of purpose. The Big picture of Sistema.bio India sales potential was
repeated in every sales meeting to continue igniting growth mindset. Sales managers
may feel low at times, but when you discuss the sense of purpose of their
existence in the system – the benefits they are providing to smallholder dairy
farmers and environment as a whole, brings a positive mood change and they
often comeback with renewed spirit.
Today, many of my sales managers are on a journey to cultivate their “growth
mindsets” and believe their potential can be harnessed via learning from
others, having a good strategy and being diligent. This re-energized sales team,
is now working directly with more than 25 farmer organizations, cooperatives
and impact firms that provide Sistema.bio access to farmers and help validate
our work around bio-digesters.
With a growth mindset, employees focus on
improvement instead of worrying about how smart they are. They work hard to
learn more and eventually get smarter. My advice to all colleagues here is “to acknowledge
yourself as someone who possesses a growth mentality and be proud to let it
guide you throughout your career”.
Adopting a growth mindset is not just essential
in your career, it’s critical. I am happy to discuss more on this subject and
happy to receive your comments on atul@sistema.bio
To read more about Sistema.bio, visit
www.sistema.bio/blog
