Attention Leaders: Tired of Being in Crisis Mode?

Attention Leaders: Tired of Being in Crisis Mode?
Crisis situations can define who you are as a leader. Even
so, the ability to handle a crisis is chickenfeed compared
to the skills involved with preventing one. This valuable
expertise separates great leaders from their counterparts
and starts with Six Strategic Success Habits every leader
needs to know.

Why do some leaders make it, yet others get left behind? Is
leadership simply about your capacity to handle or prevent
a crisis? Absolutely not: there's another big reason to
consider.

You Have No System to Handle Change

The problems and implications of not having a system to
handle change are vast. You're always playing catching up,
feel like the business is running you, and are without
enough time to focus on what's important.

Let's first look at three common ways leaders react to
change:

How do you handle change? Which apply to you and your
people?

Crisis Mode: You are in and out of crisis mode, coasting
without any kind of system. You spend a lot of time putting
out fires, and wondering why the problem was not caught
sooner.

Problem Focused: You are concerned and usually implement
short-term solutions or band-aid problems. However, your
solutions are not directed at the root cause or eliminating
future problems, so you often see them resurface again.

Strategic-Success Focused: You have a focused vision, build
on to what you know, and put it into action. You evaluate,
strategize, redirect, and then proceed.

The big difference between the Strategic-Success Focused
leader and the others is they have already made change a
habit. This leader has imprinted a clear and effective
system for predicting and managing change into their
business and team.

Strategic-Success Focused leaders don't have one crisis
after another

Instead, they create a system to handle change. This allows
them to focus on what's really important, whether its
driving revenue, creating new products or services,
mentoring others, or enjoying the lifestyle their position
has afforded them.

Why is this so important?

Because without a way to keep your business and team on
track through an environment of change, you'll continue to
waste a lot of time, money, and valuable energy on
reinventing the wheel anytime something unexpected comes up.

Next, a cycle of problems seems to begin. The first of
which is, how do you end the cycle? Where do you start?

Start with your mindset.

The best way to begin is to transform your mindset from
that of crisis mode or problem focused to more of a
Strategic-Success Focus with the following Six Success
Habits:

Go ahead, mimic the Strategic-Success Focused leader:

1. Make change a habit.

Strategically plan when it's needed, not just once a year.
Use strategy as an ongoing living tool to evaluate and
redirect your resources for the greatest impact.

2. Prepare for change.

Hard-wire your decision-making methods to extend beyond
present circumstances and forward into future
considerations. Keep asking, what will happen next, until
you have a set of favorable possibilities. Predicting the
future is unlikely, although you can increase your
decision-making success rate with a strategic review of
possible outcomes.

3. Get excited by change.

Leave behind stalling statements like Yeah but, and replace
them with pioneering phrases such as What if? Launch
strategic change from a position of partnership across all
levels of the organization.

4. Drive growth through change.

When you hear a good idea that will lead to the results
you're after, implement it. When you see something working
in your business or department, ask how it happened. Always
be thinking about the next step.

5. Create smart systems to handle change.

Automate and simplify what's working. If it's not working,
ask your subject matter experts (employees) to create a
system to streamline and update changes so that routine
work is highly efficient. This helps save time and money,
and redirects profits upwards. Money spent on doing routine
work a different way each time is being wasted.

6. Imprint change as one of your most effective patterns of
success.

As a leader, share your vision with your people. Create a
visionary memory system so vast that knowledge and
understanding are connected throughout your organization
and teams.

The Big Message here is to acknowledge where you and your
people are in regard to change. Are you ahead of the game
every time?

My suggestion: Set a plan in motion to transform your
business and team into one that gets extraordinary results
amidst change or any challenging backdrop.

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Diana Keith, owner of M-Level Systems Consulting, has been
using her expertise to create high performance
organizations and teams for eighteen years. See her website
http://www.mlevelsystems.com for valuable resources and
programs to get amazing results through your people. Get
Diana's Free Strategy Guide For Success.