by Natalie Edwards

As part of Euromarc's mission to make it easier for kiwi metal engineers to be more competitive, we're collaborating with like-minded business consultants to discuss current challenges faced by businesses and strategies to overcome them and thrive!

 

Our second series is a collaboration with Mike Clark from Think Right discussing the Success Mindset in the workplace, where some of the challenges typically appear, and strategies that can be implemented to overcome them.

Introducing Mike Clark

 

After some great feedback from our last video series, we're back with more. This time we're collaborating with Mike Clark from Think Right to discuss the success mindset and utilising the strengths within your company to prosper. Mike's been someone we've worked with for many years now. So we're excited to share his inspiration and expertise with you all. With that being said, welcome, Mike.

 

Thanks so much, Andy. Really looking forward to this, and it's such a pleasure to be here.

 

 

Challenges We’ll Discuss

 

That's great. Can you tell us a bit about your approach to helping businesses succeed, and what Think Right is all about?

 

Fabulous. Thanks, Andy. So our approach lies in our name. When we can help businesses to think right, then they act right, then they get the right results. And so the way that we work with businesses is helping them to understand that their actions and their behavior is the result of their thinking, both individually and as a corporate team. And so if we want to be successful, we've got to have a success mindset. And when we work with businesses, we help them to understand that your mindset is the result of the stories that you constantly tell yourself, both internally and individually.

 

And those stories, if you tell yourself a story over and over again, it then becomes your belief set. You begin to believe it's true. And in believing it's true, you then form your values around that belief and that informs your identity, and we act out of our identity. And so if we can help businesses to define who they want to be then starting to act like that, then that is who they become. And so for us, that's the approach we take when we work with businesses, and we find that helping businesses to logically work through the process of being really clear on what they want to achieve, what actions are required, and what thinking is required, that's how you become successful.

 

 

Yeah, that's good, Mike. So what topics do you think are of relevance to engineering companies in New Zealand currently achieving success?

 

Well, if we look at engineering companies, I think there are five key things we want to be covering. So the first one is, we've got to define what success is. Success is different for everybody, so you need to define success. And so motivational goal setting would be my first topic. How does a business motivate themselves and their staff through the goals that they're setting? And for a business that often comes down to being clear on what your mission, which is often defined as the why you're in business. It's one of your bigger virtuous values, if you like, the reason you're doing what you're doing. But when we talk about motivational goal setting, we're more about the vision.

 

So a vision is that picture of the future that is so compelling that you just absolutely are drawn towards it. And it's the more you can get clarity on that, like the GPS coordinates on a map, the more you're able to set the goal and go, that's where we want to be. And because we want to be there, what are the steps we need to take backwards? So I think motivational goal setting that is so clear and compelling, the whole team comes along. The next thing is around the team aspect. So, if a business wants to be successful, the success comes through its people. And so in this current environment, what we're seeing is that, one, finding people and keeping people is really difficult. And so I think staff retention becomes a key area.

 

A number of the engineering companies I've worked with have had a number of their staff shoulder tapped, and if they don't have a good retention policy in place, structure, culture in place, you can lose some of your key staff. And so staff retention is an absolutely essential element. We want staff to be happy. We want them to be coming to work so they're excited about coming to work. They're like, "Yeah, I get to go and work there." Not like the, "Ugh, I have to go to work." We want to make really sure that we've got a culture that retains staff. Then, once you've got the staff, of course, we need the customers. And so I think the third element that engineering businesses really need to work on is, who are they best set up to serve? Their ideal clients.

 

How do you attract more of those people, and then how do you keep them once you've got them. And so I'm really looking forward to covering off the point of difference that engineering companies have. What is it about them that serves the group of people that they're best set up to serve? What do they offer to their group of people that's different that helps people decide to use them.

 

And then inside of all of that, you'll notice that the common factor is communication. And I think that is something that absolutely we need to discuss. The engineers can be really good at what they do, but being really brilliant at something but not being able to express that or talk about that can hamper success. So effective communication is an element we absolutely need to be covering off. And then finally, particularly in the current environment, having gone through COVID and all that's happened internationally, the macro and micro things that are happening, is change. How can an engineering business successfully navigate and manage change? That's the only difference in life or death and change. And taxes, I suppose, so. Inside of that, so how will we approach change? And how will we do it successfully and effectively? So I look forward to covering off those topics as we go forward from here.

 

 

Well, those are some great topics, Mike. And I think that will have some real benefit to engineering companies in New Zealand. So, very relevant. So we look forward to talking about some of these topics in the upcoming videos. See you soon.

 

Check out our next episode here EP2: The Success Mindset with Mike Clark - Goal Setting