Change should be continuous as you seek to make your business stronger every day. It must simply be a part of who you are as a business. And there will also be specific areas in which you have decided to invest to improve your competitiveness. Worthy leadership is required to identify what needs to change to ensure that change underpins and does not undermine success.
Who Does My Business Need To Be To Excel?
Over this season of December 2020 and January 2021, we are pausing and reflecting on the question of ‘Whom your business needs to be to excel – to outperform all others in your chosen marketplace’? In this four-part series, we will highlight key articles that will support you to reimagine, and rebuild, your business to be competitively stronger than ever before.
Part Three – Equipping
Change is best when it occurs from within even though the catalyst may have been external. Change must be wanted and desired not insisted upon nor forced. Motive becomes vital, the right motive will magnify and compound the imperative to change whilst the wrong motive will disperse and neutralise any possibility of change. Here are three articles that will assist you get a handle on the catalysts of change:
1. A Leader Who Can Deliver:
a. Part One
The ability to get things done is what makes for a great business and a successful leader. But the ability to deliver on goals and project outcomes is often elusive for many businesses and the leaders within them. This weakness is the ‘Achilles heel’ that undermines the competitiveness of businesses, big and small, and can make or break leaders.
Active Knowledge Question: Do you have a go-to approach for getting things done in your business? A tested and proven formula that you have tailored to your personal strengths and which allows you to be an outstanding leader, and no I’m not referring to agile or similar.
b. Part Two
There is an enormous difference between leaders who can deliver and leaders who can only hope someone else will deliver for them. Leaders who can deliver do not carry the task by themselves, but they know how to recognise, recruit and retain achievers, and importantly they know how to create a clear runway so their team can work at their best with the best. These are the leaders you want in your business at every level.
Active Knowledge Questions: Do you know what it takes to create a clear runway, so projects and goals are delivered and achieved? Is it in the businesses and your DNA, a process that underpins delivery and success?
2. Fear As A Motivator In Business
Fear, whether recognised or not, is often the motivator of choice used in business to deliver performance. And while I do not doubt that it does deliver, I am also sure that it does not optimise the potential of any business. Further that without fear, the business would be far more successful.
Active Knowledge Question: What do you believe is the underlying energy/motivation that permeates your business?
3. What Language Is Spoken In Your Business?
You may not even be aware of it, but your business will have its own unique language. It may be a succinct language that strengthens connections and competitiveness or maybe a language which confuses and undermines performance. This language will exist, and the question becomes one of whether you search it out and craft it, or simply let it run its own course.
Active Knowledge Questions: What language is spoken in your business, one which uplifts performance or undermines it? And can you actually tell the difference?
Think of your business as a competitive team that must be inspired and motivated to go out and compete every day to overcome competition and to win while continually building its competitive strength.
Previous Parts:
An entirely new level of performance.
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All the best in the success of your business,
Richard Shrapnel
