What are the major FIVE strategies for discovering the next big things in your business?

Survival mode has become the strategy for many businesses that feel the pressure of dealing with the increased costs of both employee and consumer acquisition and retention. Many businesses spend an extraordinary amount of time on satisfying the immediate needs of their employees and consumers to sustain any momentum that remains in sight.

Equally, with more choices in front of them, consumers have options and more intelligence to make purchasing decisions. Consumers have become much more fragmented and it’s difficult to cast a wide enough net to engage them with a one-size-fits-all approach. The rising popularity of social media and growing community clusters require businesses to have a much deeper relationship with their consumers to earn their trust and loyalty.

With the new realities that companies are being faced with – how do they most effectively course correct?  The answers lie right in front of them – they must have a greater strategic focus on maximizing the relationships, skill-sets, competencies, engagement needs, and the know-how that lies within their respective employees and consumers.

To get your journey started in search of the next big thing in your business, here are five surefire strategies that will help guide you toward the answers you are looking for – by creating a path of momentum and opportunities for growth previously unseen in your organization.

1.  Leadership Must Align with Your Business Model

It’s difficult to see beyond the obvious when an organization’s leadership is not in complete alignment with its business goals and objectives. Many organizations today find themselves at risk with complacent leadership that continues to grow fragmented as business models change and the requirements for success no longer align with the current skill-sets, capabilities and know-how of its leaders.

I recently asked a CEO of a Fortune company to describe the company’s culture in one word. The response, “comfortable.”  When I mentioned that comfortable is associated with a high-risk profile, he agreed but didn’t know how to fix the problem. This scenario is more prevalent than many would imagine. The solution is to step-back and recalibrate your leadership team and solidify its identity to assure that it is capable of achieving the mission and vision of the organization – and to assure that all levels of leadership are in equal alignment and supporting one another.

It’s impossible to discover the next big thing for your business when the leadership teams within a company represent disjointed, disparate parts – rather than a convergence of intelligence and know-how that is in sync and strongly interconnected.

2.  Brands Must Focus on Advancing Humanity

Branding has become less about what consumers really need and more about what matters most to brands – and what they think consumers want. With so much competition and the rising cost of consumer acquisition, brands are attempting to hyper-stimulate artificial demand through a flurry of tactics designed to get consumers to pay attention to them. It feels like every day there is a new product or service that a brand is pitching that is the ultimate solution for a particular problem – one that most didn’t even know existed.

Consumers want brands to stop selling them so hard and start educating them on things that matter most to them. Consumers want brands to be more authentic about how they engage with them and allow them to play a more hands-on role in “the next big thing” – rather than feeling that it is being forced upon them.

In the end, brands must focus on advancing humanity by being more socially responsible. Consumers want brands to help them live a better life and increase their quality of living. Consumers, much like corporate leaders in search of the next big thing, simply want brands to focus on the fundamentals of satisfying their hierarchy of needs – rather than trying to sell them something that inflicts fear or feels forced in support of a trend that may come and go in a moment’s notice.

Innovation humanity is the new way brands should be thinking.

3.  Alleviate Growing Tension Points

Because of the issues identified in points1 and2, companies and their leaders are unknowingly creating tension points between themselves and their employees and consumers. From what appears to be a constant neglect (or irresponsible inconsistency) of what matters most to the people they should be focused on serving rightly – emerges new problems, challenges and hurdles to climb.

Nothing is perfect, but clarity of purpose is a leadership responsibility. When organizations unknowingly begin to violate their purpose/mission, suddenly the business begins to spiral out of control and damage control kicks in. This makes it difficult to discover the next big thing –and your company is forced to tackle the next big problem instead.

Become more mindful of the tension points your company may be creating (both internally and externally) and begin to course correct;  be courageous enough to change the conversation in a direction that begins to alleviate tensions  and  propel new opportunities for your business that were previously unseen and lost in the noise that you unknowingly  had been creating.

4.  Make the Workplace an Innovative Lab

Discovering the next big thing in your business requires your organization to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit. It demands that every employee take on the entrepreneurial attitude and is given the permission to responsibly fail along the way. The best ideas become reality when employees are not heavily restricted and they are given the tools and resources to unleash their passionate pursuits of excellent.

Make the workplace an innovation lab. Encourage collaboration and embrace diversity of thought. Throw the titles out the door and focus on hyper-leveraging everyone’s strengths and desires to contribute. Foster an environment that appreciates and respects differences and that is courageous enough to create the right formula to put them to the test.

Entrepreneurship is the difference between complacency and relevancy. Activate the minds, attitudes and desires of your employees to cultivate a workplace culture that fuels continuous innovation and initiative. Yes, this strategy may require you to recruit the right types of people, but instead of being reactive to the marketplace – you will be faster, smarter and wiser than the competition.

Reinvention is the new normal. Embrace it by allowing your organization to discover opportunities that were previously unseen and by activating great talent from the inside out – rather than being forced to react from the outside in.

5.  Become Intelligent About People

The reason most leaders find it difficult to discover the next big thing is because they can’t see what lies right in front of them. Let’s face it; things are changing so fast that we can’t see as much as we could before. In many respects, many of the best leaders lack the circular vision to see what is taking place around, beneath and beyond what they seek. Many leaders operate each day with blind spots and thus are not able to make the best decisions – especially about their employees and consumers.

Business is about people intelligence and when leaders begin to take the time to become more educated about the diverse needs of those they serve — they will begin to realize that the old ways of doing things are never going to get them where they ultimately want to go.

People intelligence is about becoming more engaged with and having a deeper relationship with those that ultimately determine the fate of your company’s success – and creating a platform that gives them a voice that is heard, valued and appreciated.

The next big thing is yours for the taking – but first you’ve got to learn to see beyond the obvious, to see the opportunities before you previously unseen. There’s no room for complacency in leadership; today’s leaders must have vision – with both eyes on the organization’s mission and the people it serves. Brands must be more in tune with humanity, and the workplace must become not just a place of work, but the heartbeat of innovation and entrepreneurship. Above all, we must embrace people intelligence and stop fueling tension points with employees and consumers – because they are the ultimate source of the next big thing.

I will adopt the following:

1.      Deal with reality

When things get tough, we tend to seek refuge in denial. We think: “It can’t happen to me.” It’s important to be realistic – as well as optimistic – in tough times. Take a close look at where you are vulnerable. Is your job in jeopardy? Are you struggling with your mortgage?

2.      Focus on core skills

What are you good at? Are you honing those skills? Or is your focus on side issues?

3.      Let go of what holds you back

Are there activities you do that you don’t particularly enjoy and that have no potential for the future? Let them go. Do you associate with people who hold you back? Choose to spend time with positive people.

4.      Have a contingency plan

Have a set of plans ready for bad scenarios. You’ll be much better prepared and can swing into action without losing important time.

5.      Develop new skills

It’s important to keep on upskilling, especially during tough times. If you learn new skills or strengthen the ones you have, you’ll have more career choices. Each new skill also opens up a window to more opportunities.

 If you follow these strategies, you are likely to survive – and even flourish – in a recession. 

Thanks for the invitation. I agree with your answer. Well said. 

Leadership in any capacity requires a laser-like focus, complete awareness of the problem set, and a willingness to “move the needle” when faced with uncertainty. Leaders must, at any point, be willing to make a split-second decision with potentially long-lasting and profound impacts.

The challenge, though, is that not every leader is willing to make such decisions for fear of it being considered “wrong.” They think that once a decision is made it is interminable and irreversible, and that adapting down the road isn’t an option or, even worse, they’ll be fired for being decisive.

Related: Know When to Double Down in Business

What’s wrong with this notion? Plenty. Here are five criteria to consider when making your next big decision:

In the military, there was (and still is) a pecking order of priority upon which decisions are based. The mission always came first, followed by what would serve the team, and finally, what would serve the individual. The individual always comes last because he or she was always the smallest link in the organizational chain. Playing to self-interest serves little purpose, and that’s not what a team or an organization is about.

Well, “never” is a strong word, but you get the idea. I’ve said before that failure is only determined by where you choose to stop, and it also depends on how that particular problem is perceived. The higher one ascends within an organization. For example, the same problem that appears tricky at one level may not necessarily be the right one to solve for at another. Seek as many viewpoints as you can to enhance your understanding of the situation.

There are internal and external influences that shape the feasibility of execution along a given timeline. Internal influences refer to the competency of you and your team to execute the decision in the time allotted, whereas external influences signify the driving forces that impact the deadline that you have no control over, such as weather, the economy or market demand.

You want to ask yourself two questions. First, "Is now the right time todecide?" If the answer is yes, then your next question is, "Am I capable of executing the decision?" If the answer is no then ask "why?"

Related: 4 Ways to Overcome Self-Doubt

These are the constraints surrounding the execution of your decisions.

A known unknown is when you realize a specific intangible exists but can’t quantify how much, such as traffic (if you live in Los Angeles you know exactly what I’m talking about). For instance, you're aware that rush hour in LA never really has an end point, so it could take you anwhere from 20 minutes to two hours to travel from A to B. The point is, you know that uncertainty exists but don't know how much. 

Unknown unknowns are when Murphy likes to throw another wrench in the mix that you simply can’t plan for, such as (continuing with the traffic example) a vehicle accident or engine breakdown.

Try to identify all constraints as best you can so you know how to align them towards the purpose of your decision.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. The result of any effort will depend in part on the resources used to execute it, so be sure to identify not only the primary resources available but also secondary ones, too. Every decision should have a contingency plan for when those unknown unknowns arise and deem your primary course of action obsolete.

Decision-making can paralyze you if you’re not prepared. Tackle your next major dilemma using the aforementioned considerations and feel better about the decisions you come to.

I agree with Mr Mohamad ashraf, thanks for the invitation. 

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1. Understand your customer rather than just knowing their age, colour and disposable income
2. Be careful of the products you make (make sure they're not harmful for the environment)
3. Align your goals throughout the leadership pipeline
4. Look at the bigger picture (focus on long term goals and the resources needed to get there)
5. Hire people, not skills. And train them.