Be Different or be dead

April 21, 2014

Great leaders look for the pony that created the dump

Source: Unsplash

The best leaders I knew in my 30+ years running businesses always looked for opportunity in the face of adversity.

When looking down the barrel of a gun, many traditional leaders respond in one of the following ways. They:

- throw up their hands and claim unfair
- make excuses due to a lack of resources and budget
- shout foul play due to a competitor’a price reduction
- blame the inability to execute for the mis-step
- denigrate the economy for the unplanned turn of events
- blame sudden environmental changes

Great leaders don’t spend much time whining about the fact the target was missed. They are more concerned about learning from the result and recovering from it.

Their energy is spent into finding the pony that created the excrement they are buried in

Failure teaches the leader that:

- virtually nothing happens as planned
- a thoughtful response to the unexpected is a real competitive advantage
- “Plan B” is more important than Plan A
- the dynamics around execution are critical to success
- customers haven’t been satisfied in some way; a deeper understanding of what’s going on with them is vital to finding the pony.

Find the pony buried in your failure and act FAST to recover and build value.

The market will remember how you found and leveraged the pony, not that you underachieved.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 4.21.14 at 03:55 am by Roy Osing
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