A stiff neck is a leader with all of the information to make the right decisions but gets mired down, picking the wrong choices for their business, often confused by “a new shiny thing,” or what everyone else is doing.
Picture this – you have a million dollar plan. Your business is unique. The way you manage your business is unique. You are growing at a decent pace. While your business is evolving, you are attaining fame status. However, you are unable to balance your fame. You end up taking some stupid decisions- cheating on your husband/wife with a model you had a crush on during your initial days, or giving in to public pressure and deciding to move out of the business world towards politics or something eviler.
As a business leader, you must make the best decisions in every step of life. It doesn’t matter if you’re famous, rich, or influential. While every decision you make might not be 100% right, making stiff neck decisions could have disastrous outcomes.
Assessing other obstacles in seven easy steps:
- Research the exact reason for the Obstacle: Is the problem the market itself (For ex: failing economy due to COVID-19), or is it that you have lesser customers? Have your prices gone up? Is your leading vendor going out of business?
- Consider possibilities: Is it reasonable to purchase your vendor’s company? Are you curious about repositioning your product? Have you grown your customer base?
- Identify possible opportunities and threats: There’s nothing like falling out of a supremely good airplane, just to find out you have a backpack full of filthy laundry rather than a parachute. Examine what could go right or wrong. Also, consider the investment versus the outcome of dropped opportunities.
- Choose your best three: Of the probabilities, which of the three seem to have the highest likelihood of success? Consider this thought; you might fail. Make sure there are three likely possibilities you can live, within the success of failure.
- Develop a plan: Trust me, in most cases, you won’t just show up. Moving “fairly forward and brutally right” will not work when so many industry leaders take the time to do things the right way. Creating a plan will also need an “exit strategy” – the conditions under which you need to abandon a distinct possibility and pursue a “lower-level” option.
- Execution: Don’t get stuck in the preparation stages, and don’t let planning make you miss the boat.
- You should see it through: Talk the talk and walk the walk. If you become known as a leader who bails when everything gets rocky, you will find that you have no followers. A leader without supporters is no leader at all.
