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Reports : Vision and Leadership
Leaders are "pPeople with a strong positive vision of a way forward who have the credibility to persuade others to follow and act" says Peter Rogan of Future Positive Consulting.
How can you be a leader? Read on.
In today's economic climate, "leadership may involve taking decisive and possibly painful short term action. But since the aim is not only to survive but to go on to thrive again, any short-term action will have to be taken with thought for the future. How businesses go about surviving difficult times can cripple their long term growth prospects, they can for example, let service levels or quality fall, deplete the skill base and lose expertise vital to future growth, or deal so clumsily with people that they lose their goodwill and faith in the business. As part of economic cycle, history shows that downturns turn to upswings. All storms end, the sun shines again. Good leaders can convert concern to urgency, fear into positive action and galvanise teams to work together behind a clear shared purpose that generates hope and optimism. They help the business to emerge fitter, faster, sharper, more resilient, not only having survived the bad times but able to drive sustained growth and thrive in the good times".
For those for whom things are still ticking along okay but with concerns about the medium-term effects, a potential danger here is hesitation and getting caught in a fear trap. Regardless of what might happen, there are things you can do, right now, to show leadership and take steps to future-proof your team or business.
Inefficiencies and maybe the odd bit of complacency or lack of organisation may have crept in. Now is a good time to start quietly tightening things up.
For those who are actually picking up business the challenges are still the familiar ones, the need to manage the business and the people effectively to capitalise on the short term opportunities and build a solid platform for strong sustainable growth.
Eleven tips for positive action
Whatever your situation you know you have a great business, one which is good enough to get past this and to push on. And you know you’re a leader, you don’t watch, wait and worry, you look ahead, pull people together, reinvent yourself and your business and you make things happen.
So here are eleven action tips for survival and growth that I hope will be of practical value to you:
1. Stand up and be counted. While others stand back afraid, or rehearsing their excuses, it’s your chance to stand up and prove your own leadership qualities. As an old colleague of mine once observed about life: “There are legends still to be written, heroes still to be made”!
2. Keep in your mind the picture of the future you want to create. It will help you see beyond the current challenges and make decisions that will deal with today’s challenges in a way that will build the foundation for future growth. It will also help keep you stay positive and energised.
3. Look for opportunities and act. See what can be done rather than getting caught in hopelessness of what might not work. If competitors are struggling you could pick up new business and good people to strengthen your team. (Further insights on positive opportunities are offered below)
4. Make your people commercially aware. Make sure they really know how and where the business makes money: Who the most profitable customers are, what the most profitable lines are, what the biggest costs are. Educate and empower them so they can drive profitability and cut costs intelligently.
5. Sort out communication. Communication is either the engine that drives performance and success or a frustrating waste of time and an apparent impediment to getting the job done. A huge part of leadership is ensuring effective communication. In particular, tightening up on how meetings are planned, run and followed up on, can have an immediate, direct positive impact on focus, results and morale.
6. Sharpen processes. Look at your processes. Map out how they work, spot inefficiencies and fix them. Get people involved. This can save money, reduce response times and improve quality and morale. Doing things better, faster cheaper (and in a sustainable way) is always going to help.
7. Pull together. Remind everyone that we’re all going up or down together and that our best bet is to pool our expertise, creativity and efforts, listen to, support, encourage and inspire each other. Ban blame and negativity, there’s no prizes for hacking people off.
8. Learn fast and innovate. Use the enhanced communication and teamwork to build the invaluable habit of reflecting on actions and results and generate ideas for improving anything!
9. Develop people. Help them rise to the challenge. Develop any technical skills that will help the team become more flexible and enhance quality. Help them further enhance their emotional maturity, in particular their confidence, resilience and optimism. Also help them communicate and work better with others to help the team work better collectively.
10. Get closer to your customers. Find out how well you really understand their current and future needs and challenges. Are these needs changing? Where is the opportunity for you? What unmet needs do they have that you could serve? Do they know all of what you can do?
11. Celebrate, recognise and reward where and when you can. There is usually something positive worth talking about even in difficult times. The celebration needn’t be extravagant. People enjoy and appreciate even a simple ‘thank-you’, it builds confidence and reinforces the behaviours you want to encourage.
Written by Peter Rogan on behalf of the Future Positive Team
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