To effectively gauge opportunities and tackle challenges, take charge – a handy tool is reviewing your past results, current challenges, and potential opportunities down the road. While a bit of analysis and number-crunching can be beneficial, my advice is to keep things informal and swift. The key here is to concentrate on spotting opportunities and embracing change, steering clear of getting bogged down in the intricacies of the review process. Let’s shift the focus to identifying and assessing alternatives instead of merely singing your own praises.
Building on Success
The best opportunities are frequently found by building on success rather than repeating disappointments. Take health, for instance. There’s a world of opportunities to boost your well-being beyond the obvious options of exercise, a balanced diet and annual checkups. In the ever-evolving health scene, there’s a constant flow of new medications to prevent problems that we can take charge of if we stay informed.
Financial Snapshot
Now, let’s ask ourselves the big questions: How are you doing right now, and what do you want to achieve? Get a snapshot of your financial landscape, factoring in your growth, age, wealth, and goals. If retirement is here or peeking around the corner, consider your goals, wealth, income, and maybe leaving a little something for the next generation. Here’s my two cents: take a bit of risk, understand your investments, as well as your financial advisor’s recommendations.
Reality Check
After gathering your data, give your findings a reality check by going over them with someone – a professional, an expert, or a colleague. Trust is key here, so the person you consult with needs to be knowledgeable enough that you can trust their feedback.
Mapping Your Journey
Now let’s talk about career and life. What’s on the horizon for next year? Can you hit your job goals, or is it time to re-evaluate them? Do you need to tweak your work-life balance, maybe dive into some new activities or maybe let go of ones you simply don’t enjoy anymore? This is the time to take charge mapping out your personal GPS for the next leg of your journey.
Communication and Cooperation
When it comes to communication, how do we go about cooperating to create a win-win situation?It is well proven that tactics like collaboration, trust, and listening work better in decision making than dictating, lecturing, and proclaiming false expertise. There’s extensive research supporting the idea that people resist change unless they can see what’s in it for them. When given the opportunity to argue your case, try to emphasize the benefits for the other party. If you can make them, see the positives they’ll reap in the compromise, you’re much more likely to convert them.
Risk and Creativity
Let’s talk risk. Consider when it would be beneficial to break free from the predictable and try something more creative. Making decisions and taking risks are a dance between probability and information. Predicting outcomes with solid data is one thing, but it’s a different ball game when it comes to new ideas. Help take charge of your future. And remember that sharing information often maximizes benefits for everyone.
Fresh Ideas and Strategies for Growth
Below you’ll find links to some recent blogs to help take charge of improvement in all areas. Hopefully, reviewing some of the suggestions from this list inspires you to incorporate some fresh ideas and explore various strategies. We also recommend using the content to develop and test new alternatives and solutions. In your efforts, don’t be afraid of some failures along the way—it’s the best way to learn and grow.
And remember, as the year comes to a close and stress levels tend to increase, be kind to yourself and others, find ways to relax, enjoy time with family, but also make time for yourself. Take deep breaths, cut yourself some slack, and know that your best is enough. Prioritizing can dramatically improve results. Focus on what you are good at and don’t sweat the small stuff. Think about it this way – most sports analytics are based on getting players to focus on the efforts with the greatest probability of success.
In a nutshell, taking stock of your current status can add to the excitement and potential of your efforts. Aim for accomplishment and satisfaction. Prioritize tasks and set realistic goals. Remember that accepting risk and managing change allows you to maximize your efficiency and accomplish more. Don’t shy away from those out-of-the-box opportunities either. And who knows, your next move might be a game-changer in making next year your year.
Dr. Bert Shlensky, president of Startup Connection, prides himself on his ability to define what is unique about each and every business. He works closely with individuals to develop a personalized approach that targets specific areas of concern and offers solutions based on his 40+ years of experience. His expert team will address your particular needs while working to save you time and money.
We all recognize the importance of change, but also need to consider volatility in affecting change.
Take the stock market, for example – it’s like a rollercoaster influenced by economic twists, social vibes, and market moods. Recently, in 2023, the S&P 500 went up 17% from January to July, then down 11% from July to October, only to bounce back up by 11% from October to November. Minimally, you should evaluate investing for short-term change or simply investing for the longer term.
Rapid Evolution in Our World
Our world is evolving fast. Technology, our tastes, and what’s considered normal are flipping markets on their heads. Leisure, travel, and entertainment are booming unexpectedly. Even the diet industry is getting a facelift thanks to new drugs helping people shed pounds. It’s a game-changer.
Social, political, and economic events are regularly disrupting our environment. From weather havoc to terrorism, it seems like endless crises.
Managing Unpredictability
How do we handle all this unpredictability? First, we’ve got to understand volatility and figure out how to manage it. When bridges suddenly collapsed in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, they were fixed in record time – thanks to clear goals, teamwork, and innovative solutions. We need the same approach for everything, from health issues as we age to dealing with climate events and political shake-ups.
Take our health, for instance. As the years pile on, it’s a good idea to play offense. Waiting for a health crisis to hit is like playing catch-up. Hitting the gym, eating a bit healthier, and throwing in regular checkups are like the MVPs in the game of avoiding health rollercoasters. Same goes for other bumpy rides, like dealing with the economy, wild weather, or political shake-ups.
Look at how we’ve been stepping up our game in handling weather drama like fires and hurricanes. It’s all about staying on top of things, being ready, and finding solutions. That’s the playbook we can follow for other curveballs that life throws our way.
Emphasizing Communication and Cooperation
Communication, coordination, and cooperation should be our priorities. Fire departments focus on safety and prevention rather than just enforcing laws. Why can’t we do the same for issues like crime, making things better between police and communities?
Rethinking Progress and Success While Being Aware of Bias and Risk
It’s time to rethink progress and success. We’ve made huge strides in areas like reducing smoking and drunk driving. Reviewing plans is important, but we need to do it together and be open to expert advice for better problem-solving.
Don’t forget about bias and risk: Bias is, perhaps, the biggest culprit in unreliable results. “It won’t happen to me” may be the greatest cause of unexpected volatility. Here’s the thing. We love to be right. We hate to be wrong. So, we will go to extraordinary lengths to make sure that we’re proven correct. And we won’t even know we’re doing it. Our brain, working surreptitiously in the background, doesn’t alert us too how biased we actually are.
Creating a Supportive Environment and Setting Specific Goals
Creating a supportive environment, both physically and socially, can help us deal with crises better. This includes a safe, productive and supportive physical space, along with social and businesses practices that are fair, consistent and understood can significantly add to the capability to deal with crises.
Getting specific with goals and solutions is key. We all get the importance of goals, but sometimes we spend too much time pointing fingers instead of finding solutions. Take a cue from success stories like fire safety and emergency highway repairs.
It’s all about staying open and analytical. Businesses need to understand their environment, learn from both wins and losses, and be open to new ideas. In other words, don’t be like Jack Nicholson saying, “You can’t handle the truth.”
Embracing Change for Better Solutions
In a nutshell, recognizing that change and ups and downs happen is the first step to tackling problems. We need tools to understand and predict change – just like we do with things like COVID and flu shots. Being prepared and understanding volatility will lead us to better solutions and alternatives.
Dr. Bert Shlensky, President of www.startupconnection.net, offers experience, skills, and a team devoted to developing and executing winning strategies. We guide your plans for business success and unlock your profits.Our strategy includes clear steps, and over 150 free articles and templates to facilitate your efforts and guide your process. We’re here to help you get on track and stay there as you move forward.
We welcome comments, suggestions, and questions. You can write us at: bshlensky@startupconnection.net or call at 914-632-6977.
Which line is longer? You may think it’s the middle line because the arrow points jut out. But the truth is, they are all the same size! You might not have figured it out if it was not pointed out to you. We tend to hang on to our initial perception of a situation or a problem, because we believe in deciding things as soon as we can. In some things, such as the belief that grandparents are allowed to spoil their grandkids, you will run into no arguments. But in other things, a little perspective can help immensely.
The economy has several measures of progress and each of us uses the one which support our perceptions of growth or decline A current trend since the pandemic illustrates how critical perceptions can affect our opinions and policies. For instance, income inequality is increasing as evidenced by the fact that 69 percent of the total wealth in the United States was owned by the top 10 percent of earners. In comparison, the lowest 50 percent of earners only owned 2.5 percent of the total wealth. and that many Americans don’t have $400 to pay for an emergency. On the other hand, the collective net worth of the bottom one-fifth went up from $3.3 trillion in 2019 to $4.2 trillion at the end of the second quarter of 2022, indicating they can finance a better lifestyle.
What is critical is that we understand our perceptions and their impact on our decisions, activities, and behavior.
A critical factor is our perceptions of the presenter, the environment and the communication. Licensing agreements, celebrity endorsements and great environments are all designed to make the audience comfortable with presentations, but we seldom acknowledge how they affect our individual behavior. It’s great to have a convention in Honolulu to present your ideas, but if everything about the presentation is solid, it should work just as well in Dubuque, IA or Nome, AK. Environment is important but it should supplement and enhance a convincing presentation, and not be used to make up for incomplete or inadequate data. For instance, a steakhouse can have the right look, but if the meat is not tender and does not deliver the expected flavor, no one is going to dine there after a while; they might find the local diner more appealing because you get what you are looking for in a meal.
Our perceptions frequently exclude key data or are based on highly uncertain information. While they are present in our environment and affect our decisions, we usually avoid consideration of issues like religion, intelligence, politics, wealth, sex, morality, and appearance in our discussions. Part of that is simply out of politeness, but it never hurts to take that into consideration when deciding on a course of action or a strategy to take. In contrast, we may express opinions about issues like climate change, politics, immigration, electric cars and artificial intelligence with insufficient knowledge or analysis. Again, we often let our initial perceptions do the analyzing for us. Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce are great football players, but do they really know so much about life insurance that you would automatically go with State Farm? One would hope you would do as much homework on which insurance company to go with as they did as to which insurance company to endorse! After all, they don’t want to waste their time and money either.
One of the most significant aspects of behavior is our perception of information. For example, I believe people don’t take enough risk. How much freedom do you allow innovative people to break rules? When do you provide support versus challenging subordinates and colleagues? While there may be analytical solutions to some of these, our predispositions are frequently more important in determining how we respond. But thinking outside the box, stepping away from perceptions, can lead to greater clarity. Risk does not always mean throwing a dart blindfolded; it simply means going against what you consider the norm, through research and analysis. Remember what Davy Crockett said:
Bias is critical issue in perceptions. Bias is one of the greatest complications when it comes to accuracy in the scientific analysis of decisions. This includes statistical problems like sampling, measurement, and development of information. For example, assessing Covid accurately is problematic due to varying demographics such as age, race, and other factors that convolute the analysis. In many cases, these can be understood, but are still challenging.
I also believe that social bias can be more impactful than statistical bias. This includes our preconceived perceptions and assumptions. I’m always amazed that many programmed employee selection tools outperform interviews especially in jobs requiring specific skills. Such tests remove things like unconscious age, sex, and racial discrimination. At the end of the day, you want the best person to handle the responsibilities you give them, and you want to remove anything that impedes that decision. Again, what seems like a risk has been whittled down to where the risk is minimal.
Cultural and environmental factors also affect bias. Dress, demographics, weather, location, and culture all affect perceptions in the decision-making process. These can also be used to your advantage in talking to colleagues by increasing bonding with similar people. Whenever I meet someone who is also from the Southside of Chicago, agreement on differences becomes much easier.
Style and personality greatly affect perceptions. Race, sex and age are the most common factors. Differentiating personality types like “right brain or left brain” or analytical versus creative greatly affects perceptions. For example, we greatly underestimate the positive or negative impact of using math in many arguments.
We also need to consider the timing of perceptions. In general, the audience, whether on the internet or in person, forms perceptions of a presentation in the first 90 seconds. That does not seem to be much time, but the right focus and the right keywords can get the train going and make for an exciting ride. Now, as an admitted nerd, my presentations can be a little boring. Thus, I try to improve their acceptance rate through tools like editors, comedy, stories, and pictures. I have learned the hard way that my poor spelling has sidetracked some of my best arguments. Thank goodness someone invented spellcheckers!
Let’s start a conversation – no matter what stage you are in with your business. As an exercise, tell us how you have better managed perceptions, or been victim to its bias. Then, tell us what areas you to need focus on in order to see improvement.
Dr. Bert Shlensky earned a PhD from the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T., mentored a few thousand clients at Score and his own practice, grew Sure Fit products from $ 50 million dollars to $150 million in sales including $ 60 million of direct internet sales, was President of WestPoint Pepperell’s Apparel Fabrics Business and headed the $400 million Culet Shirt Group.
In short, he knows what works and can help you lead your company to greater profitability and success. Find out more at StartupConnection.net, or email Bert at:
When an entrepreneur is inspired to begin a new business, balancing decisions between two essential concepts consistently critical to success are: Passion and Reality. Passion was best described by Steve Jobs:
“…Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
If you are reading this blog, you must already be aware how difficult it is to conceptualize, to begin and to implement your new business. As an entrepreneur, you must first understand and then clearly pursue your passion. One effective way to accomplish this task is to develop a mission statement and a plan. This mission statement will not only solidify your goals but will also provide clarity for your potential clients.
Of course, your mission statement merely lays the solid groundwork, but there are more tasks ahead of you. You will need a fully-loaded toolbox in order to succeed. Enthusiasm, energy and persistence are a few of the core tools needed. If you are able to maintain a positive and strong outlook, you will then be able to effectively market your business concepts to suppliers, customers, and investors. You must be willing and able, as an entrepreneur, to scale seemingly daunting summits. Upon reaching the peak, you will be rewarded for all your hard work and persistence.
When we understand reality, we understand the problems, limitations, and constraints associated with any undertaking. As Thomas Edison said:
“A vision without execution is hallucination.”
Passion and reality are key to developing and executing strategies in your business. However, there are other elements that will greatly affect your process:
• Support and Culture: These are critical organizational factors that you will need to balance. There will often be a trade-off between flexibility and support versus the stability of rules/discipline. Preparation, discipline and expertise are certainly crucial in dealing with the uncertainty that accompanies change. But maintaining flexibility and support will lessen the stress of change.
•. Balance of Excellence and Innovation: Your Gramma’s cookies may already be perfect, but you still need to develop and test new products and methods. Try to remember, failure is frequently part of the innovation process, so don’t let the fear of setback deter you.
• Environment: Understanding the environment and establishing a successful culture is crucial for the overall progress of your company. In order to succeed, you must face numerous challenges–whether economic, demographic, or political. However, you need to maintain a positive atmosphere with clear expectations to facilitate employee performance. A great strategy lacking a supportive culture is sure to fail, while an environment where people are given the resources to excel will yield positive results.
Dramatic changes are occurring in our society: income inequality, partisanship, racial equality, and diversity, as well as the roles of minorities, women and the aging population. There needs to be greater awareness and adaptation to create new practices in our organizations.
•. Developing Goals: Whether you are faced with long-term versus short-term; quantitative versus qualitative, or objective versus subjective goals, the process and complexity need to be considered. Decide if your goals are realistic or are you stretching to achieve them. Simplistic goals may fail to address important issues–whereas more complex goals may divert your focus. If goals are too simple, they can ignore important aspects of a situation. On the other hand, if there are too many aspects to consider, there can be a lack of focus.
•. Communication: This element is as important as analysis in developing your strategies and decisions. You will encounter many demands while trying to achieve the goals of your organization. With so much to manage, critical issues can arise in the areas of prioritization, comparison, and measurement. Therefore, communicating goals and their measurement frequently become secondary. But you should stop and consider, why not manage them effectively?
• Let measurement work for you: Ask yourself how important are the results, speed, innovation, and quality when measuring performance? For example, I believe automation has improved the speed and efficiency of many customer service processes. However, customer service and satisfaction are frequently sacrificed. How many times have we been completely frustrated with ineffective electronic customer service efforts? It goes without saying that there’s a tradeoff here that needs to be taken into consideration.
•. Alternatives, External Solutions and Perspectives: These include the assistance of objective third parties, market research, small tests, and simple analytical thinking. The most important tool is to focus on facts, alternatives, and solutions rather than personalities, partisanship and biases. Overall, you need to allow for mistakes and to focus on your wins and how to improve, rather than focusing on any losses.
More data and more analytics can improve the quality of decisions. In using analytics, be sure to consider the validity of the data, its sample size, bias, uncertainty, and risk. The greater the uncertainty, the more you will need your intuition to develop alternatives. More intuition is also required whenever you are seeking the exceptional or outlier solutions… since there are no rules.
•. Balancing Decisions Regarding Risk and Reward: These factors are critical to your decision-making process. We tend to think of risk as a taboo concept, but it won’t be once you understand it.
In order to benefit from risk, you need to define what risk is to you. Some people view risk as the “potential for harm or hazard” (think bungee jumping). I view risk as an “uncertain circumstance in which one manages to maximize the gains.”
Understand the perceived importance of the reward. People generally regret losses more than they appreciate gains—and that is a key factor to consider when making any decision. Fear is an innate instinct meant to protect us from harm, but too often fear dictates our decisions and inhibits our success.
Traditional and detailed startup recommendations are necessary for understanding the environment and balancing decisions considerations. If you are able to continuously analyze, measure, and adapt to ever-changing parameters, programs, markets, and risks, you will have a higher probability of success. Don’t be afraid to pursue excellence and take reasonable risks. Success also requires positive thinking and high expectations. If you truly believe in something, you’ll work tirelessly to make sure it’s successful. So, why can’t that something be you?
Dr. Bert Shlensky, President of www.startupconnection.net, offers experience, skills, and a team devoted to developing and executing winning strategies and results. We guide your plans for business success and unlock your profits.Our strategy includes clear free steps, and over 150 free articles and templates to facilitate your efforts and guide your process. We’re here to help you get on track and stay there as you move forward.After a few results we can discuss a long-term relationship with mutual goals.
One of the key responsibilities of an entrepreneur is the ability to make great decisions. If you choose the right approach, you’ll likely make faster and more effective decisions. But if you choose the wrong decision-making approaches, you could be courting disaster.
One of the most common decision-making approaches to making business decisions is by using data-driven analytics rather than intuition. However, I believe you’ll make better decisions by balancing these styles rather than by choosing one over the other. Take a look at the video Passion and Reality to get an idea of what I mean.
There are times when using analytics is the right call and times when it isn’t. Using data to make decisions is critically important because it reduces the tendency to make poor decisions; however, there are times when you need to trust your gut instincts.
So how exactly do you balance analytics and intuition? If you have the necessary data at your fingertips, then you should analyze that data to identify patterns, obtain actionable insights, and use those insights to make your business decisions. However, you shouldn’t avoid making decisions just because you don’t have all the pertinent data. Rather, this is when you also need to rely on your intuition to get the job done.
The fact is that many of our great innovators were highly intuitive people. In the words of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
A Flexible Business Plan Is Key
It’s important to develop a business plan that specifies your goals and explains how you plan to achieve those goals. This plan should include sections on your products and/or services, marketing strategy and analysis, and budget.
The fact is that the business world is in a constant state of flux and if you can’t change with it, you’ll be left behind. That’s why it’s critical to ensure that you create a business plan that’s flexible—one that will adapt to market changes and advancements in technologies as this will give your organization a competitive edge.
A flexible business plan lets you keep track of your progress and adjust, when necessary, by showing you where you’re going and how you anticipate getting there. And it also helps you remain focused on what’s important, enabling you to achieve your long-term goals.
In addition, if you need to secure funds from lenders, investors, or other sources, a flexible business plan will help you get the capital you need because these sources want to see that you’re able to adapt and pivot as the market changes. If you have a flexible business plan, you can show them that you’re able to handle whatever the future holds.
The Importance of Understanding Risk
Your life as an entrepreneur involves taking risks that can impact you and your business. So, before you decide to launch a new venture, it’s important that you understand the risks as well as the rewards associated with owning a business.
Every business operates in extremely uncertain environments that can produce significant levels of risk but also generate substantial rewards. Taking risks means identifying, evaluating, mitigating, and experimenting with potential strategies and opportunities that could help you build your company.
It’s also important to understand that while you are focusing on profits and cash flow to ensure your company’s viability, venture capital firms, on the other hand, only expect a fraction of their investments to show good returns, and they frequently focus on growth rather than profits.
In general, entrepreneurs can afford more risk. Consequently, it’s important that you consider that the upsides of many risks are much greater than their limited downsides. Additionally, you need to understand the outcomes and accept failure as part of the process.
Overcoming Decision-Making Bias
For your startup business to succeed, you must make fair and accurate decisions in terms of how you treat your workers and how you serve your customers.
The best entrepreneurs are those who can absorb and analyze all the information available to them to make business decisions that are logical and objective. Of course, you’re going to make some mistakes. But most of the mistakes you’ll make stem from inherent biases that distract you and cause you to make poor decisions and exhibit bad judgment.
Not only that but letting personal preferences affect the objective decision-making process, even unconsciously, can severely undermine your authority and image in your own company.
While experience and expertise can improve results, one of the worst strategies in our changing environment is to stick fast to the “we have always done it this way” mindset.
This mindset simply ignores change, alternatives, and processes and is frequently fueled by those who fear those same things. Sexual harassment, equal wages, and COVID vaccines are some examples where progress has been exceptionally slow because people are not willing to recognize the need for change and accept and implement new ideas.
However, quantitative analysis does not automatically solve bias. On one hand, quantitative measures are objective, measurable, comparable, and easier to document. Still, we must ensure we are using the right measures as well as measure and analyze correctly.
Qualitative data, on the other hand, can measure issues we don’t always consider and allow for intuition. But these processes can be compromised easily or measure wrong factors. In particular, bias occurs much more frequently in qualitative analysis.
Qualitative data can measure issues we don’t always consider and allow for intuition. But they can be easily compromised and measure the wrong factors. In particular, bias occurs much more frequently in qualitative analysis.
Consider Changes in Parameters
You should also give more weight to external parameters than basic plans and strategies when you’re developing programs and making decisions. It’s important that you regularly review and consider changes in parameters, such as population, the economy, political environment, and social values, as many of these variables are changing faster and more often than ever before. So not only do you need to understand parameters, you definitely need to keep up with the latest ones.
You should also consider your target market. Many businesses think everyone needs their products when, in reality, most people don’t need any product. So, if you want to figure out who will buy you goods or services, make decisions based off supported data and hone in on your demographic.
Replace Hierarchy
Most organizations are based on hierarchy but flatter and more collaborative organizations are actually more effective as they encourage more diverse input by enabling employees at all levels to participate and contribute to the objectives of the business. A flatter organization prioritizes collaboration, clear communication, and the free exchange of ideas.
Through collaboration and analysis, businesses can develop more efficient structures that rely on expertise via a variety of resources. And adding new positions and creating functional groups (where individuals or departments are in charge of their own specialties) will encourage more educated decisions and reactive change.
The Bottom Line
Being an entrepreneur should be an exciting and potentially profitable effort. However, it takes time, analysis, capital, and commitment. As an entrepreneur, you need to understand and express your passion. And to succeed, you must use this passion to overcome any obstacles or challenges that might come your way.
However, that doesn’t mean you should ignore reality. Many entrepreneurs overlook key elements in running a successful business, often ignoring details and analysis. It’s no wonder so many startups fail.
If you want to be successful, you must allow your passion to drive you, while letting reality guide you to where you need to be. Using some basic tools, such as planning and operations, the process can become more predictable. And understanding such things as the environment, bias, structure, and demographics, can help you make the best possible decisions for your business.
Dr. Bert Shlensky, President of www.startupconnection.net, offers experience, skills, and a team devoted to developing and executing winning strategies. Our strategy includes clear steps, and over 150 free articles and templates to facilitate your efforts and guide your process. We’re here to help you get on track and stay there as you move forward. You might start with our quick video here.
We welcome comments, suggestions, and questions. You can write us at: bshlensky@startupconnection.net or call at 914-632-6977
When you want to stand out, reach out to Bert for the tools that will build your “sticky” brand. My focus is on understanding and analyzing your dilemmas and challenges, so your company becomes profitable faster.
Call (914) 632-6977 or email me at bshlensky@startupconnection.net. Don’t leave without signing up for our useful free eBook!
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