Ram Charan shares very valuable advice to CEO’s on how to lead your organizations in uncertain times. Do take the time to watch the entire video below. It is worth the time you spend on it.
For people who cant watch the entire video, I shall try to summarize a few things that I think are the lessons we can take to lead our organizations in uncertain times.
- Ability to identify the catalyst for the changes in uncertain time. Mostly this is a person, who through some of his action or leadership creates the seed for changes.
- If the uncertainty is very high, it will always re-shape the environment. The environment will never get back to its original state.
- No law will change social change. Identify what kinds of social changes are happening around it. Don’t fight the social change, embrace it and move ahead.
- Leaders who succeed in uncertain times look at unstoppable trends over a 20 year period. They know that they might miss a few things, go through ups and downs, but keep themselves anchored with the prize & a vision of their unfair share from these trends and look outside-in. This gives them emotional strength to go through all the ups, downs and the turbulence.
- Focus on the leaders. Identify, train, coach and spend a lot of time on developing leaders in your organizations.
- Ahead of your staff meeting, assign someone from your leadership team to present about an uncertainty, explore what was the catalyst responsible and who benefitted from this and who did not. By doing this, you are changing mindsets to learn how to look at the change, who is causing it and who is benefitting.
- Look at the world through multiple lenses. Know your known unknowns and unknown unknowns.
- Maximizing shareholder value in uncertain times is a dumb idea.
- Imagine the convergence of trends and the transformation that could result from these convergence. Are you prepared for this convergence.
- Watch out for socio-economic and socio-political trends and the impact that they can have on your and your customers’ businesses.
- Place yourself in the bridge of information. Network with the regulators and the key catalyst who can influence your business environment, so that you are never taken by surprise.
- The goal is not maximizing quarterly earnings. Instead, invest in building your future.
- Have an external focus. Spend a lot of time outside the network of your organization and try to have a healthy long-term – short term balance .
- Build new capabilities within your people and products.
- Adapt your product by reviewing the resource allocation closely.
Some of this is common sense and some great advice from a great guy. I hope that you are able to learn from this and manage your organization better in a world full of uncertainty.
