— Pick a lane, add speed
We need speed. Not the breakneck, uncontrolled, sitting-your-ass-on-a-rocket kind of speed, but the speed necessary to move quickly and smartly. Given consistent data and input, faster is almost always better than slower.
We’ve been stressed, haven’t we? New craziness pops up almost daily, certainly monthly. We feel justified in being somewhat overwhelmed, and at times that feeling can slow us down – or even grind us to a halt.
- Play the cards you’re dealt. Yeah, I know, sometimes they suck. We’d like a different hand, some new cards. Suck it up, buttercup; they are what they are. It is what it is. Que sera, sera. Deal with it. Or my favorite, “be that as it may…”
In other words, take what you have, figure out how to make it work, then violently execute. Sometimes you’ve got to work with what you’ve got and take what you can. This is one of those times.
- Pick a lane. Add speed. This one sometimes gets a bad rap. There are those out there (they walk among us) who will tell you to slow down, move methodically, deliberately. Slowly. I say bullshit. Pick a lane, add speed. With consistent data and insights, speed trumps stalling. 100% of the time.
The faster you decide, the faster you can act. The faster the action, the more responsive you can be to change, both planned and “not-so-much.”
- Practice Predictive Resiliency. This is a new one, so if you haven’t been on the edge of your seat up to now (and you should’ve been), you’ll need to pay attention to this.
Resiliency is great. It’s a wonderful characteristic to have, but by nature it’s passive. Take a change or unexpected force, absorb it, then bounce back, no worse for wear, ready to meet that next change with some more springy emotions. That’s resiliency, and we’ve preached it for years. This is not that. Well, it’s a little of that, with a twist.
Predictive Resiliency is seeing the change coming, like the light of an out-of-control freight train, deciding what would work better for you that that, then pivoting with the train’s momentum, using it like a flywheel to accelerate in a better direction. Taking unplanned change and making it proactive by pivoting.
Sound crazy? It’s not. An example: Uber faced a near-fatal challenge in California, where the state passed a law making their thousands of contract drivers into employees overnight.
Never mind where you stand on the issue; Uber had a choice: accept the change and spring back gently, changing their business model entirely for a single state, or pivot hard – taking the momentum and public attention the issue was receiving and forcing a voter referendum. No passive resiliency here… it was Predictive Resiliency, pivoting from the passive into a “proactive reaction,” not an oxymoron in this case. It paid off for Uber.
There are myriad examples of taking anticipated change, seeing a more successful direction to go instead of the proposed change, then pivoting hard to execute. Try it sometime. You’ll like it.
And remember: Be Brazen. Grace and accountability can coexist.
