Observing others, teams, organizations, companies not moving (forward), making any progress it seems like some things have not been clarIfied how to…

If you, your team, your organization or your company want to make significant progress some important topics need to be defined and adressed precisley, sometimes regularly repeated, such as

– what is the objective, the result, the progress you are expecting
– who is responsible, doing what and until when
– Being agile: Requesting progress regularly
– Defining and having and overview about agreed frameworks: regularly interferring if actions, ways, decisions, results, budget and date excedences occur away from your agreed framework and adjust

Therefore leadership has to have a clear edge, being precise in its request, in its definition for an objective, where to move to, what things need to be undertaken and what things should be prevented. Vague directives will not help.

The more successful you or your company has been in the past the more difficult it is to recognize significant changes of your environment, the markets or customer behaviour and that this requires an adaption of you or your company towards new situations, in other words towards signficant change.

Whenever discussing necessary changes to be prepared for the future with my clients or colleagues in various industries I oftentimes hear
– ”the change will not work with us”
– “it has always been like that”
– “the change is not necessary, why should we”
– “to expensive, no market, no customer demand, no return”
– ”we already thought about this but it doesn`t make sense for us”
– “we have been successul without change”
– “we are still and will be very successful without change”
– ”no need for change, we are the best in what we do anyhow” and
– “we will exist with what we already did the last decades sucessfully”.
In total all the same: we don`t want to change, we want to stay in our safe harbour.

The success of the past is reflecting the intensity of your todays comfortzone. If we stay within we end up like not producing digital cameras (AGFA, KODAK), loosing (significant) market share to smart phone producers (NOKIA) and still catching up to TESLA producing electrified cars (complete german automotive industry)…
Always be aware that your success of the past is not a guarantuee for your success of the future. Adapation, adjustment and change is part of the daily business – It is the most agile who will survive, not the strongest.

Happy to read your thoughts on this…

Probably the biggest challenge of an entrepreneurials life is to hand over your business to a successor.

After serial discussions with entrepreneurs with no successor in place my top three points to solve this challenge:

(1) Define your activities and competencies that need to be handed over – what does it take to fit in your shoes?

(2) Search for the person (s) with the necessary (basic) skills to take over your activities, maybe not from one day to another but within a reasonable timeframe – and with your support.

(3) What`s your price for your lifetime work? Evaluate your business and verify with market prices, compare with peers and consider what price might be possible to be financed by a successor. Your purchase price need to be re-financed by the new owner within a reasonable timeframe, 5-7 years.