Hello, 2019! On this 1st Friday of the 1st week of the 1st quarter, I’d like to share a book with you. Bob Johansen’s, The New Leadership Literacies: Thriving in a Future of Disruption and Distributed Everything.
We all know the importance of strategizing. Business owners have their yearly goals, YOY figure reviews taking place, while setting their sights on the possibilities of 2019.
Many of you may feel like you are behind. Maybe you haven’t hit the numbers you had hoped for in 2018. Maybe there were gaps in your projections- you hit the numbers, but inventory prices went up, or supply dwindled. In any event, the profit forecast did not materialize.
Johansen’s encouraging “it’s too late to catch up, but it’s a great time to leapfrog”, acts as motivation to change things up as you plan for 2019. So, how do you as an owner, founder, CEO – shift and hit a reset button to incorporate a strategy for all contingencies while responding profitably to market disruptions, as well as innovations?
Bob Johansen suggests that business owners create a process that starts with exploring what their industry will be like in 10 years.
Surprise: Ten-year forecasting is easier than one-year forecasting.
The longer term outlook provides clarity without certainty and it clears the noise of your day to day hurdles. Gather your team. Create a friendly competition by dividing the team up. Give each a clear objective- identifying trends, SWOT in the face of each trend and then design team responses for each. Incentivize each team with rewards or prizes for the most creative thinking.
At Ascend To Sell, we offer these services in our Triple A Strategy Day. To enrich the process, we incorporate our proprietary process to develop a growth mindset, an expanded sense of awareness among the team. We work with your team to embrace disruption and innovation- becoming “deal ready” all day, every day. Your team can grow their resilience, equipped with the tools they need to thrive in the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world.
