As the speed, uncertainty, and complexity of global markets intensify, leaders must learn to navigate this fast-moving landscape—by keeping their businesses on track amid adaptive change. Leaders must develop the agility to confront uncertain times by engaging the workforce through vision, understanding, and clarity. What will it take to achieve all of this? As part of our brand promise to Inspire Change and Grow Leaders GPS Dairy Consulting has included a leadership blog on our website. Our first year of weekly posts will focus on the basic leadership skills that coaches around the world have indicated to be the most important leadership skills. Each month one of these skills will be addressed by four professional leadership development coaches – one each week. Please visit the blog frequently. Feel free to include other leaders in your organization and tell your friends and colleagues. Grow your skills as a leader and inspire change in your organization.
Transform Your Team in 2021
Tune into this podcast with Kristy Pagel as she talks about one of the most powerful, yet simple, tools dairy teams can use to boost morale, empower people and take things to the next level in 2021.
Focus
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” – Zora Neale Hurston
In normal times, those leaders who are able to maintain focus in spite of all the noise nearly always outperform those who don’t. Being able to put aside things that don’t matter, or things they can’t control is one of the keys to their success.
Never has that been more true than this year. More than ever before we are bombarded with things we can’t control. Some of them may not directly impact us, and some of them change our lives permanently. Regardless, some days it feels like we’re drowning in problems and challenges and change and noise, and there doesn’t seem to be a life boat anywhere around.
Focus is the life boat. Being able to maintain focus on things that really matter and that you can control is what allows you to keep swimming. Which sounds great, but it’s easier said than done.
Here’s one place to start. If you’re going to focus on what really matters, then you probably better have a clear understanding of what really matters. What’s really critical to your business? What’s really critical to your people? What’s really critical to your customers? Too many leaders don’t really know the answer to those questions, so they spend hours chasing things that are irrelevant.
Here’s another idea. If you can’t control it, then stop obsessing about it. Being consumed with things we have no control over isn’t new, but in 2020 we’ve managed to take it to an entirely new level. We see things on TV or on the internet that we have absolutely no ability to impact, and then we spend hours stressing about them.
Be disciplined. When you feel yourself going down that rabbit hole, stop, remind yourself you have no control over it, and pull back. And pay attention to the conversations you have. Obsessing about scary things we can’t control is contagious. As a leader, you cannot allow yourself to drag everyone around you into the abyss. They’re already struggling with the same things you are. You can’t be the anchor that pulls them down.
Keep a list of what matters at your desk where you can see it. Look at it every day. Make sure that your time, your energy, your engagement is focused on those things. Stay focused on what matters and what you can impact, and let the rest fall away.
Today is Someday
“Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.” – William B. Sprague
I hear the phrase, “It’s just not the right time”, or some variation, a lot. I hear it a lot regardless of what’s going on in the world, but right now it’s maybe at an all-time high. We always want to wait to do things we know we need to do until stuff quiets down, or until we get through this particular challenge, or until we’re not quite so busy. Then it will be the perfect time.
There is no perfect time. Things won’t ever quiet down, after this challenge there will be another one, we’re always going to be busy. But we keep telling ourselves that someday the right time will arrive and then we’ll be able to make the changes we need to make, to have the conversations we need to have, to create the business we want to be.
So start now. It will be hard. You will be busy. You will have to make some difficult decisions about how you spend your time. You will have to recognize that there are things that are taking your attention and your energy that shouldn’t be, and that you need to remove those things (or people) from your universe.
You may fail at first. You may fail a lot. That doesn’t mean you weren’t right to attempt to do what you thought needed to be done. Regroup and go at it again. Don’t let initial – or in some cases, repeated – failure stop you. If you are convinced that what you’re doing is right, then keep hammering away. Don’t just look for the easy button, because it doesn’t exist.
Look around your business. There are things you should be doing. There are things your people should be doing. There are critical, strategically important things that need to be done, but nobody’s doing them because it’s not the “right time”.
It is the right time. Make sure that you & everyone around you are doing the things that matter today and will matter tomorrow. Don’t wait until some imaginary “someday” when everything will be rainbows and unicorns and everything we touch will turn to gold. Get to work.