Only a relative few have made significant, successful
adjustments to changing conditions from irresistible forces
(such as financial markets, weather, demographics, new
technology, and attitude shifts). There is perhaps no
more interesting an example than Berkshire Hathaway, which
started as an owner of a failing textile mill that
eventually did go out of business due to adverse conditions.
Since then, Warren Buffett, Berkshire's founder, has
successfully navigated the changing tides of business and
financial markets over the years to built one of the most
successful companies ever. Unlike Microsoft, and Intel
which had relatively few important shifts in irresistible
forces, Berkshire Hathaway has weathered many by
redirecting its resources and energies into new, more
promising directions.
After having been primarily a portfolio manager of a
handful of common stocks for many years, the company has
recently shifted again to emphasize purchasing and
operating companies. You too can learn to catch the full
benefit of today's volatile and rapidly changing forces and
spur your enterprise on to greater and more rapid growth
than ever before.
Be Prepared: Being in the Right Position to Optimize
Opportunity
Many business people are fond of saying, "I'd rather be
lucky than smart." Everyone has experienced the
exhilaration of an unexpected boost from favorable
circumstances and wishes it would happen more often.
Choosing a strategy that puts you in the right position is
a way for you to create your own good fortune.
You will achieve more favorable results by thinking
differently so you work smart, not hard. When asked why he
scored so many goals in hockey, NHL scoring champion Wayne
Gretzky replied that he always skated to where he thought
the puck would be going. That gave him an important edge
because most other skaters go toward where the puck is
already.
But it isn't enough to just be in the right place at the
right time. The tightrope walker working outdoors in the
wind prefers that the wind be at her back, because a side
wind could more easily knock her off balance. Setting up
the tight rope to make the breeze's direction favorable can
provide the necessary advantage for her. She can further
improve her security by using a balance pole.
To move your enterprise from its current position to a
better one takes careful thinking It's like the tightrope
walker finding the wind coming from the wrong direction,
and demanding a move in the tight rope's location before
she performs. The equipment handlers have a lot of hard
work to undo and redo. That's the bad news about getting
into the right position.
The good news is that once your company has reached its
ideal position, your subsequent need to change will be
less. In the long run, this means less change, less work,
as well as better results. Like the Olympic wrestler who
fights his way to a position securely on top of his
opponent, you will be able to seize superior positions that
will allow you the advantage no matter how your competitors
react and your business environment changes.
Most organizations today are unfortunately like the
wrestler's opponent, operating subject to the whims of
powerful competitors and vagaries of circumstances as their
noses grind into the smelly, dirty mat. Is yours one of
them?
If your enterprise is like most, it operates according to a
plan. Your business now pays attention to executing that
plan. When things go wrong, most people in your
organization will try to protect their self-interest and
their chances for achieving the plan's goals. If things
get really bad, they'll be stunned into inaction.
These behaviors reflect some of the many faulty thinking
patterns you should abolish and replace in order to achieve
a winning position in an increasingly volatile and
unpredictable organizational environment. You need to
focus on getting the most benefit from your enterprise's
irresistible forces rather than trying to fend off the
forces.
Every change in irresistible forces provides new
opportunities to those who think that way. For very
cyclical businesses, when demand is strong, you can sell
high-cost facilities and obtain long-term relationships
with attractive customers. When demand is weak, you can
buy low-cost facilities, repurchase your own stock,
negotiate lower prices from suppliers and get complementary
competitors interested in merging with you. There is
always some optimal opportunity being presented, if you
learn how to look at the circumstances with an eye prepared
to gaining important advantages from your business's
environment.
Once an opportunity is recognized, you need to be properly
prepared to take the right actions at the right time. You
have to have the flexibility to take advantage of rapid and
extreme changes in irresistible forces. Such flexibility
can be developed through the use of planning extreme
scenarios that greatly exaggerate the future impact of
these forces to clarify opportunities.
This thinking requires using an improved kind of scenario
planning for possible future circumstances, most of which
will never occur. By studying these scenarios uour
enterprise will then locate and be ready to implement its
"Always-Win, No-Lose" opportunities, that minimize the down
side, while leaving the up side open-ended, regardless of
the irresistible forces.
This new form of strategy replaces the costs and delays for
your organization learning primarily through broad scale
trial and error. Irresistible force management is the
missing element that makes this possible.
Copyright 2008 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved
----------------------------------------------------
Donald Mitchell is chairman of Mitchell and Company, a
strategy and financial consulting firm in Weston, MA. He is
coauthor of seven books including Adventures of an
Optimist, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, and The
Ultimate Competitive Advantage. You can find free tips for
accomplishing 20 times more by registering at:
====> http://www.2000percentsolution.com .
No comments:
Post a Comment