Facing many new challenges? You bet. Marketplace clutter. New marketing channels. Much more competition. Some that you may not have yet even noticed. And more on the way. Requiring leaders who are more attuned to shaping the future? Absolutely.
If you do not change the direction you may end up where you are heading.
Lao Tzu
One of the most significant challenges facing businesses today is the need to attract and retain the best talent. The talent pool is simply not growing at the rate at which the demand will continue to accelerate. Certainly, a challenge facing businesses big and small.
To meet the challenges ahead new leadership skills and behaviors are essential. We believe today’s business leaders require five key imperatives. These imperatives include the ability to:
Build Relationships
Leaders need to be able to establish and maintain good, effective relationships with their peers, with their employees, with customers, and within their communities. All are of critical importance to a business.
Good relationships can create a boundary-less flow of capability that can be channeled to customers’ highest priorities.
Create Teamwork
Leaders need to create a positive team environment where people are excited about the contribution they can make. Where they are inspired to be actively engaged. Where they understand exactly what is expected of them. They know the bar is set high. These leaders value diversity and foster inclusion and they know how to communicate with force and effect, both inside and outside the business.
Shape the Future
Leaders must be forward-thinkers who are able to envision a future state, set the direction, and then lead others toward that goal. Shaping the future is not just about the internal processes, it also means shaping the courses of action we have available to us in the markets. Expanding our markets, moving adjacently, and dealing directly with customers as well as potential business partners.
Deliver Results
Leaders are ultimately responsible for delivering results and that means continually driving operational excellence, adapting with agility to changing circumstances. The challenge will be to carry that strength forward with future leadership.
Leaders need to be stellar role models. Be completely accountable for all their actions. Be mentors and coaches for all around them… Leaders need to take the high road in pursuit of better performance.
Deliver Results
Leaders are ultimately responsible for delivering results. Quite simply, that means continually driving operational excellence and adapting with agility to changing circumstances. An additional challenge will be to carry that strength forward to the next future leaders
Employees are the most important discriminator in the success of any business. As leaders, we need to ensure that we are creating an environment where employees feel valued and know they are making a contribution to the business.
The bottom line
There’s a passage in Ernest Hemingway’s 1925 novel, The Sun Also Rises, in which a character is asked how he went bankrupt. “Two ways,” he answers. “Gradually, then suddenly.” The quote has since become emblematic of how a crisis takes shape. First with small signs you hardly notice and then with shocking impact. Pay attention to this.
What we learned from the experience is that you can’t plan your way out of problems. If we were able to plan effectively, we wouldn’t have been in a crisis in the first place. Our success wasn’t the product of our own brilliance, but our willingness to experiment. That’s how we came across the “happy accident” that led to the events business.
The truth is that it takes some bad luck to get into a crisis and it takes some good luck to get out of one. Sound management can help stem the bleeding, but if you are ever going to rebuild a successful business, you have to experiment and allow for the unexpected.
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