How can they hear anything in the midst of all the noise and commotion going on at a professional football game? Listening is more than hearing words. It has to do with "hearing the whole picture".
How do leaders hear pictures? They simply allow the views of everyone involved to "sink in" while trusting their own internal computer to put all the pieces together. That is exactly what today's business leader must do to make the right changes in the game plan: allow the views of everyone involved to sink in. Trust your own internal computer to make sense of it all. Trust that changes in the business plan will come clear.
Right now there isa sea change underway all across the world, if we can let ourselves hear it. Some of the components, each mammoth in their own way but also contributing to global change on a scale unlike any others include:
- Industrialization of several billion people.
- Drought encompassing huge parts of the earth and the earth's people.
- Instant communication as cell phones and internet technology spread virtually everywhere.
- Climate change on a scale not seen since the twelfth century.
- Political change.
- Financial upheaval.
- Population increase.
- Energy crunch.
- Food crunch (starvation along with inflation of food prices and a scarcity of food in the face of growing consumption).
As a business leader you have two choices, just like a head football coach who gets surprised by the other team. You can stand pat with your game plan (business plan) and take your chances or you can make adjustments based on what is happening as perceived by you, your players and coaches.
My recommendation is that you think like a great head coach, listen hard to all hands round and then make changes. Adapt right now to what is happening and be prepared to adapt yet again and again. You might end up saving your operation from destruction or you might end up seizing on opportunities that put the operation far ahead of the stated goals. The only justification to stand pat would be if everyone agrees that the current plan is already very well suited for the various changes going on in the world.
Change is not evil, just inevitable. Big change means big opportunities! Seize them!
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