Carpe 2018

Strategic planning, acquisitions, revenue targets – the year stretches ahead with plans and more plans. As in previous years, all these plans represent change. New people, new divisions, new processes, new systems all mean doing things differently. How well has your organization dealt with changing to achieve in the past? Are plans made but it’s then just business as usual? When your business faces pivotal decisions about its future, the most common response internally is a flurry of activity with diminishing results. Meetings are held to discuss the situation and what should be done, and people shuffle and reshuffle their tasks while they try to understand what is expected and needed.

What you need is a crisis! 2017 may have given you enough crises for a lifetime but times of crisis and chaos engender massive change. Whether the change is ultimately good for the bottom line is a function of the leadership and discipline of the management team. The organization’s energy can be easily and effectively channeled into those areas most critical to success:

• Seize the leadership advantage

  1. Capitalize on the strength of your leaders
  2. Evangelize the organization

• Focus on the customer base

  1. Boldly assess your organization’s ability and willingness to compete for business
  2. Paint a vision you and your customers can fall in love with

• Capitalize on existing major projects

  1. Unearth what the organization is really thinking and creating
  2. Provide proving grounds for emerging talent

• Reduce cost

  1. Protect the true value in intellectual and emotional capital
  2. Protect the true value in financial and operational capital

• Increase the value of key producers

  1. Answer the need for speed
  2. Prime yourself for innovation

• Manage productivity and output

  1. Guarantee solid opening moves and seize quick wins
  2. Speed up output and problem solving by maximizing the value of interpersonal relationships

• Increase effectiveness and speed of decisions

  1. Give people an understanding of what’s going on so they can engage themselves in the process
  2. Connect people to the vision through vivid storytelling