The Importance of Proactive Leadership

Today, Pete Mohr dives into why being proactive isn't just a buzzword—it's a lifeline for your business. Why sit idle and wait for a storm to ruin your business when you can plan and adapt? Using the ship analogy, Pete underlines the essence of preparing for the rough seas in business. More importantly, Pete explores how your SWOT analysis integrates seamlessly with the 5P's model. The idea? Be ready, be adaptive, but don't be hasty.

Here are a few things Pete covers:

• The importance of being proactive in business
• Balancing the act of foreseeing opportunities and avoiding impulsiveness
• How to overlay your SWOT analysis onto the 5P's model (Promise, Product, Process, People, Profit)
• The significance of trend analysis and employee feedback loops
• The critical need for technology in proactive planning

It's Time to Take Action:

To elevate your business, your first step is to go back and examine your SWOT analysis. Align it with your 5P’s, identify any gaps and opportunities, and start planning your course. If you skipped the SWOT analysis, make sure to go back to the last episode and get it done.

Are you looking to make some changes in your business and your life in 2024?  Head over to speaktopete.com and book a chat with me to see if we're the right fit!

Transcript

Pete Mohr: 0:35

Today's episode is the fourth of a 10 part series here all around the 10 pillars to purposeful leadership for your business. It's all around keeping ahead of the curve with a proactive mindset. So it's all about being proactive this week. I'm your host, Pete Moore. And welcome back to another episode of the business owner breakthrough. Why wait for a storm to start building shelter? It's interesting, you know, being proactive means that you foresee what's coming and prepare in advance, not just problems, but opportunities as well. Right. Acting ahead of time, keeps you in control. And think of it like steering a ship. And we talked a little bit about the ship analogy last week, too. You can't wait until you're in the middle of the storm to decide your course you got to plan ahead based on the weather forecast. You know, there's an old adage out there that the early bird gets the worm. And yes, it's cliche. But it's also true. Let's say you've noticed that people are showing interest in eco friendly products, for example, within your industry. And if you adapt early, you can lead that trend instead of catching up later. But this isn't really just a solo effort. You got to tell your team, that you're seeing these sorts of things, share the vision so that they can prepare and adapt and help you steer the ship in those weekly meetings in those quarterly meetings, all the different times you have together to talk about strategy. But also remember, there are risks of being too early when we look at some of this stuff. Being too early has its downsides. You don't want to pivot your entire business model just because you noticed a slight trend in something within your industry. It's not being proactive, that just being hasty, essentially. So it's a balancing act. We talked about balancing act a lot here in the 10 pillars, but the idea is to be keen, but not necessarily impulsive in some of these decisions. And last week you did the SWOT analysis, or I hope you did a SWOT analysis. And if you didn't, take some time, go back and listen to last week's edition. So that you can do that SWOT analysis, because we're going to talk a little bit here about is overlaying your five P's on to that SWOT analysis. And that's why I popped this one in after last week's episode, because once you have that SWOT analysis, now you can go back to your five P's and you know, the five P's. Right, the promise, the product, the process, the people in the profit, we talked about a lot. But go back and overlay the SWOT on a few different things. And I'll give you a few examples here along the way. But number one, if we're talking about the promise, look at your SWOT and see how it aligns with the promise, or the transformation that you offer your clients, right, the GFI. If there's a strength that you can use to better fulfill that promise, then it's time to maybe modify a little bit right? We look at the product or the service that you offer, are there some opportunities to improve or diversify your product or service based on the SWOT analysis you did last week? And then we go to process? Did you see any weaknesses in your SWOT that could be solved by tweaking some of your processes by looking for automations by, you know, aligning some of that sort of stuff, so that you can dig into the fourth be your people, to your strengths point towards the need for specific talents. Maybe it's time to hire or reassign the roles, maybe it's time to maneuver the accountability chart, or find maybe new suppliers, or level up your customer base, and your ideal clients. Number five is the profit. And finally, you got to evaluate how your strengths and opportunities could better fuel your profit. Because remember, unless you're not for profit, the changes that you make in your business based on the SWOT analysis and overlaying them here on these five P's, only should be made if it's going to create more profit for your business. You know, the idea is to align your internal and external landscape with the five P's. It allows you to be proactive in all of the areas of your business. And as always, I've got a couple of questions to tack in when you're going through this process as well. And one is name one opportunity that you can act upon. Now, I'm going to keep pressing this because a lot of small business owners keep procrastinating some of the most important things they need to do. And I'll keep sort of bringing these things up. But maybe there's a gap in the market or a trend that you spotted. What steps can you take to capitalize on it now? It's time to make things happen. And number two is to list a strength that you can leverage. Because you may have known the strength has been there a long time but think about the leverage of that strength. Is there something you're particularly good at, that you're not fully using? Whether it's a product an autumn nation, a person within your business, whether it's some of the capabilities that you have, how can you make this work in your favor? You know, we've talked about the importance being proactive, and how you can align your SWOT analysis to your five P's. And let's dig deeper a little bit into some techniques that can help you along with this, right. So one, we've talked about it in the past, too, it's trend analysis. And if you're keeping tabs on industry trends, then you're going to be in the know you're not flying blind, right? You need to be subscribing to industry, newsletters, and Facebook groups and all these different areas so that you can follow thought leaders on social media, attend webinars, go to conferences, you know, dedicate at least 30 minutes a week to read on the industry trends, and make a list of the trends that you can capitalize on. Don't forget to talk to your employees, right? employee feedback loops are so important. Your team is your eyes and your ears on the frontline of your business, create a suggestion box, hold regular meetings, find some way to get the information out of your team members, they want to see your business survive and thrive and do well. And they want to be a part of that. And if you're having some problems, one of the techniques I really love to think about is the five why's and if you ask yourself, why five times as you're drilling down into what's going on, let's say sales are down, you would ask why? Well, because traffic is down has decreased. Why? Because our website traffic has decreased. Well, why? Because your site's not maybe mobile friendly enough. Oh, well, the site's on mobile friendliness. So in other words, now we have an action that we can make the mobile friendly site that's going to increase our traffic and move the ball for us right, pick one issue that you're facing with and drill down into the root cause by using these five why's maybe you'll get it in three wise or four wise. But the idea is keep drilling down with that question, why until you get to an actionable item that you can make change upon, right? One of the things that I see doesn't happen enough out there, when we're looking through all of this strategic planning, and everything is having a plan B, or maybe even a Plan C. This way, if your initial strategy doesn't pan out, you're not left scrambling, you simply move to the next plan, create a backup plan for one of your current projects. What if your planning fails, I mean, it might be your lease is coming due, it might be a new supplier that you're wanting to work with. It might be a new addition to your management team, it might be a new partner that you're taking on in your business. But you should always have a backup plan for some of those. But in particular, the bigger things out there. And another one that I find a lot of people aren't using enough. And even I don't use it enough. I love what technology can do for us. But I don't dig into it as much as I probably should. And leveraging technology in today's space is just so important for the advancement of your business. There are a ton of software tools out there that help you forecast sales and manage inventory that track customer behavior CRMs and invest in technology that help anticipate future needs or challenges and list some of the tech tools that you are using currently. And identify some of the gaps that could be filled with some new software that you're hearing from some of your friends in your business or whatever the case is. Stay in touch with people that are like minded and have up seed and a read on your industry so that you can be sharing with them, the wins that you have, as well as they'll share the ones that they have had with you right. Being proactive means that you're not just for seeing but you're also preparing. It's about making calculated decisions based on data on trends and on good old human input. And you can't take away the human input. It's the most important piece in my opinion, or if you're overwhelmed and caught in the day to day and it's hard to think ahead. And if that's where you're at, let me help you move from being an operator to an owner. Just go over to speak to pete.com and book a chat me if you like this episode, subscribe to the podcast so you can get it automatically each week downloaded to your phone and until next time, keep being proactive and watch how it changes your business and betters your life as a business owner. Now go and make it a great day.

Unknown: 10:10

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