The Future Is Uncertain

The cycle of change has sped-up to a degree where we now have catastrophic and micro economic cycles, making the present unpredictable, let alone the future. This does not work well for traditional managers and traditional Marketing 101 plans.

5 - 10 year business plans are, at best a wish list and certainly not how the future will turn-out; and even if it did turn-out according to your plan, so much change would have transpired that you would have only managed to suffocate your organization, should you have managed it to the 5 year plan, as your nimble competitors would have sped past you at the speed of the unstoppable change we are experiencing.

So how is this good news?
Well, those that sped past you while you were anchoring your organization to its plan (the past), certainly have some answers.

Managers Manage, Leaders Lead. These 2 are not mutually exclusive. In fact, management is a role, while Leadership is an attitude, an approach. If as a manager you are not a Leader, you are probably short-changing your organization, your team and yourself.

Leadership, on the other hand is not about limiting, white-knuckling, anchoring and holding-tight to that plan. This only produces stress, depression and a paralyzed organization. Yes, Leaders have a 5 and maybe 10 year Vision for their organisation. However, true Leaders tap into their passion and purpose to find the creativity within them to inspire their teams towards a future tha, in augmenting the organizational Vision, fulfills their team's purpose and passion.

This sounds easy, simple and even simplistic. And whilst this concept is easy, the practice certainly is not. It works against convention (the past). Everything within us tells us it is unsafe, unchartered, unorthodox and even fool-hardy. Why should I stick my neck out? Why not follow the beaten track? At least that way I can always blame the system and keep my job. This is unfortunately, now, old thinking. No organization is safe from absolute failure as we have seen in the recent (and ongoing) Global Financial Crises. Your organization could be gone and so would the safety of your job unless you inspire your team to endorse Leadership by operating from their purpose.

Safe is not the same as pragmatic. Risk awareness is not the same as risk aversion.

So take a risk-aware and pragmatic approach towards restructuring your organizational DNA to have inbuilt change endorsement; another phrase for Leadership. This is achievable through a commitment to Leading by example of authenticity, purposeful approach, encouragement, empowerment and absolute determination of eliminating lethargy and inertia.

Be a Leader and empower the Leadership in others so collectively you are able to develop a dynamic and sustainable organization. An organization that operates out of respect for the individual, the team, the community and the environment.

The time of lip-service of Environmental Friendliness and Employee EMpowerment is gone. True Leaders know this and those organizations that seem to be unstoppable even in these times are likely to have already endorsed these basic concepts and deployed them.

Your organizational greatest asset is your people and if your management team still sees them as a liability and an easy cost-cutting method, I feel your organization is going to face a challenging future indeed.

Read authors like Seth Godin and books like The Accidental CEO by Tom Voccola and you will see you are not alone in understanding that the future of your organization is written with different rules to those that got it here. And seeing that few organizations have been able to endorse, let alone deploy these concepts, you will be on of the first organizations to join the few that seem to be speeding towards a prosperous and abundant future for themselves, their teams and their investors.

Aldo Grech - CxO Consulting

A sales executive without a CRM system is equivalent to a writer still using her typewriter!

I have heard so many excuses as to why a sales executive might not utilize the Organisational CRM, and they range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Examples include; not as good as the one I used in my previous Organisation, I prefer my paper based system, I have my own and I'll load it on the company PC, I find it slows me down having to enter all that superfluous data into the system, and many more!


Any team members that utilize these and other excuses should never be part of a progressive sales effort. Having said this, there are many reasons why sales executives might be utilizing these cover-ups and they may include; previous bad experiences suffered at the hands of inadequate managers or even at the hands of your managers, lack of induction training, non-enforcement of Organisational tools, in rare cases - a desire to keep knowledge away from the Organisation that employs them. You get my point, none that you wish to accept in your Leading Organisation.


Sometimes however, it is the non-integrated concept that proves to be the Achilles heel; that is, organizations with badly implemented CRM systems that are not integrated into the standard sales process, as an example still utilizing spreadsheets for reporting, systems that do not feed straight into order-raising/invoicing/forecasting, etc..


So, if you are a Leader of a progressive Organisation, ensure that you have followed the "paper" process confirm that there is only one process, utilized by all and that is designed around eliminating paper.


If you are a Sales Executive, engage your Organisational-supplied CRM (none of them are perfect and sometimes there are good reasons for the differences), speak-up and request training, changes, and enhancements. But do not do so unless you can clearly show that you have utilized the system as otherwise it will be clear that yours are just excuses and will not be taken seriously. You can always leave and join a dinosaur Organisation that allows you to operate without their approved CRM system; and you know what happened to the dinosaurs.


Aldo Grech - CXO Consulting