DISCOVERING OPPORTUNITIES V.6 – would you consider your company or employer opportunistic?

Is the only purpose for discovering opportunities to increase revenues and profits?

Is there a process for any employee to identify an opportunity and develop it?

Discovering opportunities is more than just revenues and profits.  Discovering opportunities unleashes the potential creativity of all employees, your internal experts, who are your eyes and ears in your markets and industry.  Discovering opportunities creates a culture of entrepreneurship, trust, management seeing employees’ potential to contribute to the long-term durability of the company.  This has played out in a number of examples that contributed to companies being built to last.

2022 Budgets, strategies, departmental plans are most likely completed.  Is there an opportunistic element for 2022?

With all the 2022 planning, can you determine if your company or employer is built to last?  Is the existing business going to be strong, viable, relevant to the market, to fund the operations and provide all the resources for what’s next?  The what’s next is your future revenues and profits, customer requirements met, anticipated customer requirements met.  If not opportunistic or built to last, what needs to change?

The next blog series is on “built to last.” Jim Collins published this book in 1994 with new editions in 1997 and 2002.  Consider all the differences then and now.

Jeff Bezos in an article published November 16, 2018, thinks Amazon will fail and go bankrupt (Source: https://www.investopedia.com/news/why-jeff-bezos-saying-amazon-will-ultimately-fail/).  Jeff Bezos explained this to employees at an internal meeting.

At any of your companies or employers, has this statement ever been made?

If it could happen at Amazon, could it happen anywhere?

Does this mean Amazon’s compass heading is in decline now or in the future?

The existing business then is not built to last.

Is the threat internal or external?

Do the shareholders question him, seek new board members or what action should they take?

Is Amazon worth fighting for?

The book, Built to Last, by Jim Collins, researched elements of companies that have existed since the 1800’s.  The Innovation Advantage LLC blog will examine these companies with a perspective of 1994 to 2002 and through the lens of now.

To develop possibly your interest in built to last, take a self-assessment for your company or employer.  Do any of the elements listed exist where you work?  If so, how are they demonstrated?

• Visionary
• Operate with a core ideology, values, purpose.
• Make goals that capture people to excel, stimulate progress.
• Achieve goals.
• Broad range of objectives.
• Opportunistic, experiment, trial and error, these are an element of strategy, planning.
• With senior leadership changes, company continues to thrive.
• Are senior leaders promoted from within or from the outside?
• Overcome obstacles, setbacks, failures, self-inflicted mistakes, resilient, sustained long-term performance, made an imprint on the world around your company.
• Focus on yourself, how to achieve more, better results daily.
• A drive for progress that embraces change, innovation.
• It is a great place to work.

These are a few points to review for yourself.  Built to Last by Jim Collins reviewed these characteristics and more for the 18 “visionary companies” in the research.  These 18 companies began between 1812 and 1945.

For companies that are 77 to over 200 years old, does it take more than optimization projects/improve productivity to be built to last?

We are all on a journey to make our company or employer to be “built to last.”  It is a journey built on a framework that has multiple moving parts.  We will examine this as we move forward through this blog series.

All the best Discovering Opportunities and the journey to be “Built to Last.”