Major strategic shifts, mergers, acquisitions, top leader changes are all risky but avoiding risk is a sure road to ruin.
Staring at spreadsheets while market share erodes, is not what leaders are paid to do.
Great leaders are decisive. They don’t wait for their feet to get wet to know the tide is coming in. (Tweet This)
Instead, they look to the future. They cast a rope wire across the rushing water, anchor it down and start moving. Risky? Sure. Scary? Maybe.
Once a strategy is in place, implementation takes its first steps. This is often accompanied by equivocation. Whether quiet or loud, sparse or pervasive, it takes a toll. Here’s what often happens:
- Second guessing
- Planners plan
- Analysts analyze
- The risk averse scream “fire!”
- Critics come out of the woodwork
The temptation is to respond with information, facts, charts and projections. It’s too late for that. A flurry of analysis now will be perceived as justification of the decision. Perhaps it is.
Post-decision analysis can’t be trusted.
Great leaders get people to support a strategy, not by force or with a pile of data, but behind an idea. Even if its scary. (Tweet This)
Sometimes because it is – scary is first cousin to thrilling.
Consultants that work with leaders in high stakes situations do their clients no service by burying them in models, paradigms, blueprints, playbooks and ghastly PowerPoint presentations.
That is not consulting – let’s just say it.
Great consulting in high stakes transitions needs no complicated model or dozens of contractors with “consultant” printed on their business cards.
What is required?
- Understanding your clients objectives
- Business
- Personal
- Trust from the leader
- Trust in yourself
- Knowing what the leader must do to move the organization across the tightrope
