Do you spend your time on solving challenges or capitalizing opportunities? This is the key question that defines the future of your company.
Today, the Facebooks and Googles are built in a heartbeat. Digitalization has made everything faster and more erratic. In the fast-paced environment, it is easy to get caught into putting out fires instead of seizing profitable long-term opportunities.
What differentiates leaders stuck dealing with emergencies and mini-catastrophes from the leaders who capitalize opportunities? The key difference is in how effectively they use information for making better decisions and predicting shifts in customer behavior.
We may have all the information available but don’t have a clue how to make the most of it. If we didn’t see Trump or Brexit coming, how can we possibly foresee the fast trends in customer behavior? How can we anticipate our employees losing motivation?
Unfortunately, we suck at consuming, analyzing and using information. Try to google ‘customer segmentation’: 4,010,000 results in 0.46 seconds. The truth must be out there but how to dig it out? Actually, there are several different truths but how do I know, which of them suits me and my customers the best? And what if it changes tomorrow?
Are you prioritizing the urgent but not important?
At some point, I realized that I woke up at 5 a.m. every morning. Not because I was so eager to start my day with the unlimited opportunities out there for me to grab, but because I was too anxious to sleep longer. Yet, I was struggling to really get going and get things done.
I was collapsing under the flood of information, forced to continuously reevaluate the decisions based on new data. This also made it difficult for my colleagues and staff to get things done. No matter what I did, I wasn’t able to scale myself as fast as our business was scaling up – not even by hiring new people and delegating responsibilities.
I realized that I needed to create local order to make it in the chaotic world.
Local order – the leader's key to a good night's sleep
By local order I mean simply the set of assumptions and processes that describes the world well enough to allow us to make good decisions, giving us temporary peace of mind. Local order is not the truth. It is just true enough to allow faster decisions.
If you are getting up before dawn but can’t make the most of the early hours, I warmly recommend creating your personal local order. It will allow you to use your waking hours more effectively and sleep better.
To create my local order, I use the following tools:- Practical strategy with simple guidelines
- Easy tool to collect up to date and very easy to use customer information
- Clear job descriptions for the staff
- Easy process to involve the staff into decision making and to share information
- Simple to-do list
- Simple not-to-do list
I’ll write another blog post later about the tools you can use to create your local order. Then, I'll dig deeper into the topic and discuss how to share your local order with the people who matter to your business. Ultimately, that is the key to success when your business is growing.
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