How To Avoid Falling On Your Face
(By Gil Gerretsen) Overall, corporate executives spend about 2.4% of their time actively thinking about the future. But the ability to anticipate the future is one of the key ingredients to great leadership and business success, especially during a business plateau.
If you race ahead without knowing where you are headed, you may get there fast, but it will probably not be the place you wanted to end up. We see that happening a lot in today’s economic environment. Far too many business leaders never think or plan for a serious economic realignment. For many, the possibility never even crosses their mind until it is too late!
In contrast, entrepreneurs spend the majority of their time trying to imagine and anticipate the future, and then trying to figure out how they can operate effectively in that environment.
If you have not done so in a while, start contemplating what steps you can take to better understand and predict the future? Here are some tips to get you started:
1. Begin by looking backward. Studying the trends and cycles of the past will improve your ability to imagine the future. Remember the slinky? Eventually, the other end makes a landing. It is not in exactly the same place, but the patterns ARE predictable.
2. Figure out the next lifecycle for your business. Every revolutionary idea unfolds in five phases.
a) The idea is invented.
b) Key enabling technologies allow the innovation to spread.
c) Key insight turns a technological possibility into a commercial application.
d) A business process emerges to generate profits from an unmet market need.
e) The product or service eventually becomes a commodity and price wars erupt. Then, consolidation shrinks the field of viable market contenders to just a few suppliers (often three).
3. As Michael Gerber taught in his book, “The E-Myth,” work ON your business, not IN your business! Spend at least one day per month out of the office to think and anticipate where you might be able to take your business.
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