Future shock demands agility.
Will you be like a rabbit, darting here, darting there?
Leaders in all walks of life, including businesses, must be able to respond to change and future shocks more quickly than ever before. You will find there is a need for flexibility and agility if you continue to prosper.
If you are responsible for planning and budgets, you should probably create two for the year. The business plans you prepared for June will likely not address the changes in the coming year.
Worldwide, Information Technology spending continues to snowball, creating innovation, new usage patterns, and continued cost improvement for users. Leaders can drive growth for their businesses and non-profit organisations by taking advantage of this surge in development. This development has the potential to disrupt current business models.
New ways are emerging to attract and retain members using efficient, secure, always-available communications. In these strategies, user control is critical, and communications in context, at the right time and place, make a significant difference.
Can your business handle a severe shock?
Crafting a business plan that can handle adversity is critical to achieving your expectations. Most people will not complete their objectives this year because they will quit before making any real progress.
Start with a list of assumptions, where critical thinking begins. What do you think about where the economy is going in the coming year? Will interest rates rise? Will I need additional help? What product lines will contribute the most profit? Which products are no longer contributing? Divide your assumptions into three scenarios:
- A bad year
- A good year
- The best year ever.
Making assumptions aims to shape your aspirations and set objectives for the best scenario you can envision. Above all else, be yourself, and don’t worry if someone doesn’t like you or what you are doing, as most people struggle to like themselves.
In building your budget, use the assumptions to handle surprises if there is a future shock; even in good times, challenges will be managed, like losing a critical customer or employee as competition intensifies.
You become more vulnerable when you overestimate positives when they never materialise, and when you try to be too aggressive about profit and growth potential.
New solutions are not necessarily better than old solutions.
When a solution is known, it doesn’t mean it is well-utilised or good. Don’t assume a new solution is needed if you want to make real progress; it isn’t always the case. Progress often hides behind dull old solutions and underused insights. Perhaps you need new knowledge or a fresh set of eyes to look over your organisation.
Quotable quotes.
“Most people drift through life without devoting much energy to figuring out specifically what they want and what they need to do to take themselves there”. Darren Hardy
“We often waste resources, processes and ideas at our fingertips simply because they don’t seem new and exciting”. Peter Sergeant