Zigging and Zagging

There are a lot of people in the marketplace (including us) offering advice to executives and owner/CEOs about how to run their businesses better. Usually we try to stick to the fundamentals of effective business management – the things that have worked successfully for other owners and managers in the past.

But in addition to those fundamentals, there is one overarching rule – everything changes, sooner or later. Every new management technique (be it process re-engineering or lean manufacturing) will ultimately lose its effectiveness, and something else will arise to take its place.

The challenge for owner/CEOs and other executives running businesses is two-fold:

• Distinguishing between winning fundamentals that have worked in the past and temporary tactics with a limited shelf life, and

• Looking for what will work next

The ultimate skill to which every leader and manager aspires is the ability to see around corners – to be able to anticipate what will happen, what technique will work next, to see the future.

While no one (to my knowledge) can see the future, we can train ourselves to think differently from the crowd – to zig when everyone else is zagging – to seek out the opportunities where no one else appears to be looking.