January 11, 2005

PLANS. MEET. REALITY.

🚀 Audacious Move™ of the Week

Business leadership demands the ability to adapt strategy when conditions change—without losing sight of where the organization is going.
The best leaders know when to abandon the play, respond to a Point of Inflection™, and Call the Audible™.

Plans are useful. Until reality decides otherwise.

There comes a point when sticking to the plan becomes more dangerous than changing it.

The market moves.

Customers behave differently.

Technology changes the game.

Results start heading in the wrong direction.

Something happens that challenges the assumptions you made when you created your strategy.

And the leader has a choice.

Keep running the play.

Or Call the Audible™.

In football, the quarterback walks to the line of scrimmage with a play already called.

Then they read the defense.

Something isn’t what they expected.

So they change the play.

They don’t abandon the objective.

They change how they’re going to achieve it.

That’s exactly what audacious leaders do.

🏈 They read the field.

Too many leaders treat their strategic plan as something sacred.

They create it, align everyone around it and then execute it regardless of what happens around them.

That’s nuts.

A strategy is based on assumptions about customers, competitors, technology and the market.

And assumptions can be wrong.

More importantly, assumptions can become wrong.

That’s why leaders need to Ride the Execution™.

Stay personally involved. Watch results. Listen to the frontline. Stay close to customers.

Look for Points of Inflection™—evidence that something significant has changed and the current play may no longer work.

And when you see one, don’t defend yesterday’s play simply because you created it.

Call the Audible™.

📡 SCAN. SHIFT. STRIKE.

My process is simple.

SCAN.

Read the field.

What are customers telling you?

What is your frontline seeing?

Where are results departing from expectations?

What assumptions aren’t holding up?

SHIFT.

Change the play when the evidence tells you to.

Not because you’re bored.

Not because the latest management fad caught your attention.

And certainly not because someone yelled “PIVOT!” (I hate that word 😡) in the boardroom.

Make the change the new circumstances demand.

STRIKE.

Move.

FAST.

Don’t Call the Audible™ and then spend six months studying the audible.

Execute the new play.

Be Imperfect FAST™.

Execute. Learn. Adjust.

🎯 The destination doesn’t necessarily change. The play does.

Calling the Audible™ isn’t strategic wandering.

The quarterback doesn’t change the objective when they call an audible.

They’re still trying to score.

They change the play because what they’re seeing on the field tells them there’s a better way to get there.

Business leaders need the same discipline.

Stay relentlessly committed to where you’re going.

But never become emotionally attached to how you originally planned to get there.

Because reality always gets a vote.

And sometimes reality tells you: Change the play.

That’s when audacious leaders earn their keep.

They see what others don’t.

They make the call others are afraid to make.

And they move while everyone else is still discussing what happened.

SCAN. SHIFT. STRIKE.

Call the Audible™.

🚀 Want more Audacious Moves™?

🎙️ Listen to Audacious Moves to a BILLION™ for practical, contrarian ideas for building an extraordinary business.

✍🏻 Explore more articles, ideas and proven tools at BE DiFFERENT or be dead.

Extraordinary businesses aren’t built by ordinary decisions.

They’re built one Audacious Move™ at a time.

Now go make yours.

Cheers,
Roy

• Posted 1.11.05 at 06:00 am by Roy Osing
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