As a thoughtful leader today of a company or team, you have to assess, apportion resources and take action in an environment.
You can do this only if you look to the future. If you spend your time enjoying the present or worse, wishing for the past, the world will most certainly pass you by. here are a few tips to help you stay ahead of the game when things get rough
- Take a step Back. You need to sit back and reflect on your business. assess your failures and learn from them, assess your wins and think of more innovative ways to improve on them.
- Be a Fast Follower. Hang back and give a new idea or approach a 6 to 9 month window to see if it will work
- Flexibility. Stretch your mind to learn new skills and explore new approaches. Look for learning in post-project reviews, customer meetings, changes in priorities and mistakes. Seize these experiences to build flexibility into future approaches.
- Strength. Regardless of the whirlwind of changing circumstances around you, continue strengthening what your team is the very best at–core competencies. Don’t paint stripes on your back if you are not a zebra.
- Speed. Quit analyzing and follow your intuition. Apply the 80/20 Principle to make smarter, faster decisions. Gather 80 percent of the relevant information in the first 20 percent of the available time.
- Stay Uncommitted. Cope with constant change by locking yourself in as little as possible. Long-term leases, hard-to-sell property and expensive equipment may be necessary for your business, but choose shared or easily turned over resources when you can. The most successful entrepreneurs are those willing to quickly change direction to capture an opportunity or avoid a threat.
- Get a step Ahead. Change is a given–the question is not when will change come to your industry, your market and your business, but how soon. If you want to win in the long run, you’ve got to be a step ahead of your competition, not just one or two days out of seven, but every day of the week
