My day of reckoning came while delivering a seemingly great news presentation to a Board of Directors in Canada. Financial measures, departmental KPI’s, productivity metrics and daily dashboards, start taking up our energies and planning for the future starts to take a back seat. This axiom becomes all-consuming especially in depressed market conditions. As a leader one is expected to captain the ship through the storm, but one is also mandated to keeping the ship seaworthy & sailing after the storm has passed. As a leader if you’re not positioned to seize the opportunities (or if you get blindsided by the threats) it’s you who will be to blame and likely also end up as a marked man for the businesses stakeholders. When the economy improves, it’s bound to throw up new opportunities (& threats). You could be focusing all of your energies to dig yourself out of the hole, but as a leader you also need to keep asking yourself what do you’re going to do when you’re out of the hole? People will quickly forget how bad it was. To quote Steve Carell (Big Short) “I have a feeling, in a few years people are going to be doing what they always do when the economy tanks…” # 3: People in markets have short memories Sheikh Mohamed Maktoum the landscape has morphed from shifting sand dunes into a bustling Aerotropolis fast becoming the cynosure for modernity and innovation. ![]() Your organization was set up to serve a purpose and as long as you don’t lose sight of that and continue to build capabilities around this purpose (staying relevant) you have a good shot at success. With a proliferation of on-demand business models, disruptive technologies and fickle customer loyalties, it’s getting harder staying relevant in the market place. Unless you’re in the business of manufacturing floppy discs or providing an equivalent antediluvian service, managed well, chances are that your business can and will be able stand on its legs and ready to run when needed. When it does, as a leader you don’t want to be caught on the wrong foot and be in a position from where it’s too late to get back into the game. ![]() The point is that there will also come a time when the economic environment improves. Since then, like most folks here, I’ve been through one boom to bust, to another boom. At an impressionable age, I lived out the Asian financial crisis as an expat in the late 1990’s convinced that an economic Armageddon was playing itself out. Markets and economies go through cycles, in varying degrees. The good news is that nothing lasts forever, the bad news is that nothing lasts forever. ![]() Here are a few reasons why leaders should not lose sight of the bigger picture: It forces us to prioritize and focus on immediate execution, but that shouldn’t be at the expense of losing sight of the overarching goal. A universal paradox of leadership is balancing the competing strains that pull apart our available resources, time, money and people. Tackling the immediate challenge is always pragmatic, but worthy leaders never lose sight of the bigger picture. In a challenging business environment senior executives often program themselves to go into survival mode by focusing on operational minutiae.
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