Once you've taken stock of yourself in terms of where you
have trouble dealing with irresistible forces, turn your
attention to the habits in evidence throughout your
organization. Use your answers to the following questions
to determine your enterprise's strengths and weaknesses
when it comes to managing irresistible forces:
(1) What irresistible forces are already affecting your
enterprise? A good beginning is to compile a list of the
irresistible forces that you understand are already
impacting your organization. You can learn a lot about your
organization's likely future actions by studying how it has
acted in the past. Be sure to consider any unique
influences of customers, suppliers, competitors, employees,
new technologies, new social trends, demographics, economic
factors, governmental regulation, and community attitudes.
(2) What has your enterprise done well in responding to,
adapting to, anticipating, and creating these forces? It
is important to see irresistible forces in a positive light
in order to take advantage of their potential to help your
organization. For that reason, it's necessary to carefully
look for past positive responses.
In making future changes, you want to keep these good
habits in place or even build on them to create even more
effectiveness. In answering this question, consider the
timeliness of the response as well as its appropriateness.
The classic example of a positive response to product
tampering, which may return again, was Johnson & Johnson's
immediate recall of all Tylenol products.
(3) Why did your enterprise do well with regard to these
forces? Answering this question will help you get to the
causes of your success. These may relate to the skills
possessed by various employees, information your
organization develops and analyzes, or an ability to focus
as a common thread running throughout the organization.
Keep asking why until you think you have the underlying
causes. Johnson & Johnson has since used scenarios of
possible future events and values reinforcement to help
them be prepared should these circumstances recur.
(4) What habits would have helped your enterprise to be
more successful in these past situations? You might try to
rewrite history here to model what would have been an ideal
response to the irresistible forces. Then step back to see
what habits would have helped your organization to make
that ideal response.
(5) What existing habits are in conflict with these habits
that would help you be more successful? Contrast your
current habits with the ideal response habits. Be careful
not to overly model on past situations. The future could be
quite different; in fact, you can count on it!
Here's an example of how ignoring irresistible forces can
be dangerous: Remember when RJR Nabisco was purchased by
KKR? RJR's CEO Ross Johnson thought the company was too
large for anyone other than management to bid on. That
belief caused the company to waste resources and stalled
progress, by making the company feel falsely immune from
irresistible forces requiring continuing good business
performance and a higher stock price.
Where is your organization ignoring irresistible forces?
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 .
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