What’s the best way to manage business risk?

Go toward it.

Does that sound risky, itself?

It can be. The alternative, however, can be far worse.

Real business risks, ignored…well…it’s not pretty.

Remember, first, that not all risk is the cliff diving, high-flying, life-defying kind.

Many of the circumstances that bring about these types of extreme risk are, frankly, ones you can’t control anyway.

The national and world economy, for example is something you can’t do much about.

Devastating acts of nature…same thing. You just have to be ready to adapt well, however things work out.

If these are the risks ones you worry most about, scenario analysis is a tool that could be helpful to you.

Second, the real risks in business are often things you CAN control.

And they’re often already inside your company.

They’re the risks that you either created (often unwittingly) or that you perpetuate by not taking them on, and then managing, minimizing or eliminating them.

(It sounds a bit like a virus, doesn’t it? That’s not a bad metaphor for how these things often work).

Any of the following situations are a risk to your company.

They can lead to product and service quality problems. And that can lead to the loss of customers, profits, and valued employees, too.

By the way, these are all circumstances you can improve:

- Lack of focus
- Inattention to important details…the ones your customers care most about
- Lack of clear, complete communication
- Inaction or ineffective action when a problem is discovered
- Confusing, inconsistent and ineffective ways of getting work done
- Ineffective and frustrating hiring, onboarding, training, managing and mentoring practices

The signs of potential risks and trouble can be subtle…or glaring.

And because you’re in the middle of the situation, you may not really see or grasp problems until they’ve been festering for a long time.

Start to remove risks inside your business in these ways:

1. Brainstorm

Start by considering the parts of your business that feel in control.

What gives you confidence that these things are working well?

Next, think about what feels out of control.

Which of these worry you the most, and why?

Be specific as you create both lists: “working well” and “worrisome.”

2. Pay attention

Don’t assume that all is as it seems.

What assumptions are you making that you need to check? (Often, where assumptions are concerned, you’re either very right, or very wrong).

What data and information do you wish you had to monitor and manage the things you’re most concerned about?

If those risks prove to be real (see the next step), that’s information you’ll want to begin to gather and use.

3. Go toward the risk, and test to see if it’s real

Seek to understand what’s really going on before you jump into action to prevent, mitigate or manage perceived risks.

Observe, research, inquire, test in whatever ways you can to start to see if the risks are real, or just worries that are unwarranted.

And, by the way, people may tell you, “Our work is different. It can’t be measured and managed easily.”

I’m here to tell you, though, as a former operational analyst and process auditor at Apple, there are ALWAYS things you can do to see how things are really working, compared to how you wish they were.

The information you gain in this way is always clarifying. And usually, it’s also good for profits, while it makes things work better for everyone involved.

In addition, get to know people who can advise or teach you. They may quickly see potential problems that you’re overlooking, and shouldn’t be, now.

5. Chunk the action

If changes are necessary, once you understand the risks that are present, break the change into a series of achievable actions.

You’re more likely to do the work if you “chunk” it into manageable sections.

Suddenly, big goals that were overwhelming become accessible and motivating.

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“This feels risky! This feels risky!”

A colleague and I were joking nervously on the first day of an intense, weeklong training class.

We were about to begin a rigorous simulation as we learned to coach teams through high-risk, conflict-ripe situations.

In the release of tension through humor, we were being honest about our feelings and our sense of the learning risk we faced.

We met that risk. It was not easy.

But it was a definitely a risk worth taking.

Most of the business risks I’ve taken during my career have fallen into the “risk worth taking” category. They’ve been risks of all kinds, including:

– Starting a career in a difficult national and local economy
– Changing careers
– Changing companies
– Starting a business
– Moving halfway across the country
– Stopping work for a couple of years to get a master’s degree
– Changing careers
– Changing jobs several times in the same company
– Starting another business
– Adding new products and services as the market changes, some opportunities emerging, while others go away

For some, it’s because they see risk as an experience to be endured, not a process to be managed.

Or they don’t understand risk and its benefits, when successfully faced.

Risks in business can occur in many ways.

They can be the result of uncertainties with new projects, products or services.

Risks can arise when a company grows very quickly, or when it expands into unfamiliar markets and works to meet the needs of new customers.

Individual employees, too, face the risks of change. Sometimes that change is welcome or invited. But many times, that is not the case.

You get the picture: business risk can arise in many expected and unexpected ways.

No matter how you well you manage risk now, you can always learn to handle it better.

Start by understanding your risk personality.

Are you most likely to:

– Seek risk, seeing it as a challenge and an adventure in some way?
– Love the adrenalin rush of risk so much that you create it in situations where it doesn’t have to be?
– Try to understand and manage risk?
– Steer clear of risk in all forms?
– Believe that risk does not exist in your business or industry?

Remember, however you feel about risk, your competitors are trying to manage it better than you do.

And the company that handles risk most effectively has a clear advantage over more fearful and/or less adaptable competitors.

That’s because change is always underway, whatever your business or industry.

Consider these many moving parts that most companies face:

– Customers change in terms of what they want and need
– Markets move and adapt as new competitors emerge and others leave
– Technology continues to advance, and to become smaller, faster, and sometimes, less expensive
– Employees move to different jobs and companies
– Suppliers create new products and services, and enter new markets with the products and services they already sell

The net of it is that if you hate risk, and hate to change, you may become obsolete as you try to stay right where you are, attempting to preserve the status quo.

To understand how well you handle risk now, start by considering how you handled risks in the past:

1. Think of two to three major risks you faced in the past few years.

2. Did you anticipate these risks? If not, could you have anticipated them with more or different information?

3. How well did you handle each risk?

4. How could you have handled them better?

5. Are there risks you avoided? Were you able to keep them at bay, or did they show up again in a different, more vigorous or otherwise more challenging way?

Begin, also, to look ahead:

6. How would you like to improve your risk assessment and management abilities in 2013 and beyond?

7. What information might help you anticipate, understand, and manage risks better? How can you gather this information most easily?

Improvement begins with understanding and acceptance.

Knowing where you stand, currently, goes a long way toward helping you improve your risk management and other abilities.

We’ll return to the subject of risk in the next blog post. I’ll share ideas for how you can begin to handle risk better.

In the meantime, if you’d like more ideas on how to make the next year a better year, here’s a previous blog post I wrote, Seven tips to make your business change-ready for an improved year.

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the weekly newsletter I publish. Sign up for the newsletter here.

“A good half of the art of living is resilience.”
Alain de Botton

A good half of the art of business is resilience, as well.

Here’s how the need for it shows up, typically:

- All signs are that things are going pretty well.

- Oh, maybe the data show that one small thing is not quite right, but it shouldn’t turn out to be a big deal, after a few process tweaks and tucks. It’s really nothing to worry about.

- Suddenly, out of the clear blue, you’re facing potential disaster.

That little problem you weren’t worried about?

It blew up.

And now you’re sunk.

Or are you?

This is when resilience is a potentially business-saving asset, if you have it.

But for those who struggle with resilience, what causes it?

It’s fear.

And it’s human nature, in many ways.

No one wants to think about what might go wrong.

But putting your head in the sand is not a winning strategy in any business or profession. 

And it only increases stress, instead of burying it.

Manage your stress by reducing your stress, rather than by trying to ignore it.

If you’d like to grow or improve your resilience, start with the following five ideas.

They can soften the blow or save your business during unexpected and challenging times:

1. Stretch your thinking.

You’ll be more prepared to respond to any unexpected situation if you consider what might go wrong well before something happens.

Just by considering a wide range of possibilities, and mentally rehearsing what you and the people you work with would do to address them improves your ability to respond effectively in any circumstance that occurs.

One way to do this is scenario analysis. In a simple, structured format, you consider the best case, worst case, and most likely circumstances.

Then you stretch even further in each direction, and consider EVEN worse, and EVEN better things that could be ahead. Having done that, your “most likely” scenario is likely to be different and more accurate, than it previously was.

And however it works out, you are likely to have previewed and rehearsed, even in cursory fashion, what you might do and how you would approach previously unexpected situations.

Here’s a link to a post I wrote about it, Strategic planning: Mine your imagination with scenario planning.

2. Pay attention to critical details.

Track key indicators of possible change to improve your ability to predict what might happen, before it does.

Look at it this way: you’re improving the crystal ball you use to predict what will happen in the future.

To use examples in nature, animals, who are tuned in to very subtle signs in their environment, are far better than humans are at predicting and being ready for some natural disasters when they occur.

Dogs and cats, for example, can often tell when an earthquake is going to happen.

A recent New York Times article addressed birds’ ability to anticipate and prepare for dangerous storms. That article is here, Birds Have Natural Ability to Survive Storms.

Similarly, you can discover and track early warning signs of possible change in business.

To do so, start by identifying the highest risk aspects of your business.

Then brainstorm details or related trends that you could track to give you early warning about the very changes you worry about now…but could take action to prevent or minimize if you knew they were beginning to occur.

3. Figure out what processes and systems must work if only part of the company can work.

Change those core and key processes and systems now if they’re the ones your business must stand on to ride out an emergency for a while.

And if that emergency never occurs…and hopefully it won’t…you will benefit from faster, easier, more cost-effective processes and ways of getting work done.

That’s almost guaranteed to lower your costs and improve your profits.

4. Create an emergency plan and resources for your business.

This one is easy to wave off, but it could save your business, and it could save lives, too.

Encourage your employees and friends of the business, such as your customers, suppliers, and colleagues to do so, too.

Here are links to pages on the FEMA website that tell you how to create business preparedness plans and create emergency kits:

Business Preparedness

Build an Emergency Kit

5. Practice.

Find small ways to try resiliency out.

Be creative. Be positive, even if it’s not pleasant to think about.

Treat resiliency-building like a game, if you can. It’s a game with high stakes, if you have to exercise it.

But your business…and your life…could depend upon it.

And the odds are it will have beneficial effects far beyond what you might expect, even if that rainy day never comes.

“I want what I want, and I want it NOW!”

That sounds like a little kid having a tantrum, right?

It wasn’t.

That was me, 27 at the time, on a gray, blustery day in the new city where we were moving.

My husband…who’d just accepted a great new job we didn’t expect just then, but which he couldn’t turn down…wanted to push on as we looked for the next place we’d call home.

And me?

I just wanted lunch.

Well, that, and to be listened to.

I quietly worried about how we’d afford a second house while we tried to sell our first one (a house we’d only owned for four months) in a difficult Midwestern economy.

And I wondered what jobs the new city might have for me…again, in a very difficult economy.

I’d just started a new magazine for my current employer and had hoped to see it through its first important year of groundwork and growth.

Finally, in the wintry mid-afternoon wind of this not-yet-friendly city, I’d had enough of “making do,” being flexible, and not being listened to…by my husband, or, frankly, by myself, either.

I wasn’t being honest about what I wanted, up until that point.

“I want what I want, and I want it NOW!”

You know the feeling, too.

I know you do.

And you may know that feeling as the leader of a team or company.

When I think of this phrase applied to leaders I’ve worked with, I remember one client, in particular. He was one of the founders of a very rapidly growing financial services company.

I used to joke with him that what he REALLY wanted was to “defy the laws of business physics.”

In other words, he “wanted what he wanted” – major improvements in the way, and ease, with which work got done at his company – and “he wanted it NOW!”

He’d had enough waiting for change to move at a normal pace through his company.

If you and your team “want what you want, and you want it NOW!” but you’re nowhere near the point of having it, these may be some of the reasons you’re struggling:

1. You’re not listening to yourselves, or each other.

Speaking from my own experience in the situation I’ve just described, and also, as a team leader and team member, at different times, listening is where you should start.

Are you listening to yourself?

Are you listening to each other?

Listening well, and fully engaging everyone in a project – and keeping them well-informed throughout it – can be far more powerful than you would guess in terms of creating success.

2. You don’t really know what you want…even if you DO know what you DON’T want.

Sometimes you know what you don’t want.

It’s what you have now.

But instead of that…you want…what, exactly?

If not knowing what you want is a problem for you or your team, try this (really…just try it):

- Imagine you have a magic wand, and can make any change that you want, right now.

- Now, imagine using that magic wand, and being in the new situation.

- Describe it. What’s “most different” from the situation you have now?

3. You don’t believe you can have what you want.

Sometimes teams don’t believe they can really have what they say they want.

To be fully activated, and on board, it helps to “pre-experience success.”

One way to do this is to envision success in detail, and to imagine the process of successfully getting there…over, around and through barriers you may experience on the way there.

Your team may also need more coaching, feedback, and peer interaction as they adjust to the changes they are going through.

4. You don’t know how to get what you want.

Wanting something, and actually being able to achieve it, are two very different things.

There are many ways to figure out how to get started, once you know what your goal really is.

Here are just a few of them:

- Research the best ways of doing the job.

- Take training.

- Observe, and ask questions of people who’ve already achieved what you hope to.

- Practice.

- Experiment, then observe what happens. Adjust accordingly.

- Get coaching and feedback.

- Pause to refresh, and stay connected as a team, as you move forward.

5. You don’t know if you can maintain success when you achieve it.

Think of it this way: if you happen to get what you want, but don’t believe it’s “really yours,” you may not be able to handle having it, much less be able to keep it.

It’s like a lottery winner who doesn’t believe he’s worthy of the lottery winnings, and fritters the money away to return to the more familiar, less-moneyed state.

Good fortune, even if you’ve worked very hard to create it, won’t “stick” if you don’t know what to do with it, or how to maintain it.

Prepare to be successful.

Start to develop the beliefs, knowledge and skills you’ll need to manage success when it arrives.

6. You’re not clearing the decks to make success possible.

Many people want to achieve success, but they don’t free up the time, energy, attention and resources to actually do so.

What do you plan to stop doing so that you can start doing something new?

Make success possible.

Make the time and space for it.

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Business is a game. It’s a game with high stakes, of course, but a game, nonetheless.

In spite of that, sometimes one’s zip, zoom and zest drain away.

When your enthusiasm has drained away – for any of many possible reasons - there are ways you can get it back.

Use one or more of these ways to get your game back.

1. A goal, or goals

2. Rules

3. An opponent (which may be your own past performance)

4. Feedback

5. Ways to track your progress toward the goal

6. Actions you can take to play the game better and achieve better results, with practice

7. Challenge that’s engaging without being overwhelming

Let’s take a look at each element in a little more detail:

1. A goal, or goals

An easy place to begin when you’ve lost your enthusiasm, is to clarify your goal.

Remind yourself why you do this work (in addition, of course, to getting paid).

Who benefits most from what you do, in addition to you?

What positive impact does your work have for them?

2. Rules

Rules can get complicated, over time.

Unnecessary details can cloud the “how,” even if you’re clear about the “what,” “who,” and “why” of your game.

See what you can simplify.

3. An opponent (which may be your own past performance)

You may have a clear opponent in your game. It may be a competitor you’re trying hard to beat.

Usually the game that pays off best, however, is when you’re competing with your own customer-focused past performance, always trying to improve it.

Choose a worthy opponent that constantly helps you make your best better.

4. Feedback

Engaging games give you feedback.

Business is a game of “Who can satisfy the needs of the customer best?”

Look for ways to get and use strong customer feedback.

5. Ways to track your progress toward the goal

Sometimes the simplest thing you can do is to record something that’s easy to track but significant in terms of leading directly to the desired results.

It’s like a person who’s trying to let go of excess weight who decides to keep a food diary, trying to see what habits may be delaying, or preventing progress.

Paying close attention – as tracking forces you to do – often changes behaviors in a positive direction.

6. Actions you can take to play the game better and achieve better results, with practice

If there’s nothing you can do to improve, there’s no game.

And if there’s something you can do to improve, but you choose not to, there may be a game, but you’re choosing not to play it.

Look around for, and then take the actions you can take to make something work better.

It will, almost inevitably, lead to improved performance and results.

7. Challenge that’s engaging without being overwhelming

Your first challenge, if you’re feeling depleted or defeated, may be to figure out what the game really is that you’re playing, or caught in.

You may discover that the game is one you don’t want to play anymore. Plenty of people have found themselves in that situation at one point or another.

On the other hand, you may find and renew the drive and commitment to drew you to this line of work, or this company.

Maybe you find you need to up the ante, and expect more of yourself and others, and then to make that more possible through various decisions you make and actions you take.

Or – quite the opposite – you may find you need to relax and smell the roses a bit more.

Maybe all you need is to appreciate your work more, and to enjoy the process of doing it (I’m not kidding. Focus on the process…enjoy that…and the results are likely to be more satisfying, as well).

Whatever you find, the sooner you take the time to refresh and recover your game, the sooner you’ll be playing the game you’re really meant to play, and win.

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish. Sign up for the newsletter here.

“I’ve had it! I just want this pile of problems to go away!”

Does that sound like something you’ve said (or a cleaned up version of it)?

The person in this case was overwhelmed and dispirited by the problems of rapid growth, as was his whole team.

“I just want to get things done, and to solve problems so they stay away!” he said, dejectedly.

That sense of frustration, and momentary futility affects startups, mid-size companies, and corporations, as well.

For example, “No one has time to improve the way we get work done,” said a beleaguered colleague recently. She’s a long-time manager at a leading high-tech firm.

“We just have to keep pushing work through the processes we have, hoping they’ll get the work done well enough,” she said, in exasperation.

Surely there is SOMETHING you can do if you’re feeling this way, right?

There is.

Start simply, but start.

One way to begin is by answering one or more of the questions below.

Your answers can guide you to begin making improvements, the benefits of which add up in a big way.

1. What isn’t working?

Make a list.

Start with the things that are causing you and the people at your company the most pain.

Then, in front of that list, put a list of the problems that are causing your customers pain (you know what those things are, right? If not, find out).

2. How do you know you have a problem?

Gather the facts.

You may discover, in the process, that there are, indeed, problems, but they’re very different from what you expected they would be.

3. What does the problem cost you or your company now?

Once again, you may be very surprised. Sometimes problems that seem small are costing you a lot of money, or may in the future.

You won’t know until you check.

4. How does the process work now, before you improve it?

Draw a picture of the process, the way it works now.

Then, ask a sample of other people who use the process to draw a picture of how it works, as they see it.

The differences may be eye-opening. This may show you that another problem is also in play: poor communication.

5. Who do you do your work for?

Be clear about who the customers are for the work that you, specifically, do. In many cases, this is someone inside your company.

6. How do your customers want the work done?

These tell you what your customers’ requirements are. These often include details such as what your customers mean, specifically, when they say they want something that is “on time,” ”accurate,” or “cost-effective,” for example.

Customer requirements are your standard for success.

Know what they are and meet them.

7. If you don’t know what your customers want from you, how can you find out?

Then, do that.

8. If the process were working perfectly, what would it be like?

Imagine the process working easily and effectively, with little or no waste.

Describe and then write down a few of the most significant details in that perfectly-working process.

9. How is that perfect process different from the way the process works now?

Make a list of the differences between the way things could be, and the way they are.

10. Who are the customers your entire company does its work for?

These are the people who ultimately pay your salary when they decide to continue to do business with you, and to refer you to others.

11. What do your company’s customers want?

Make sure everyone in your company knows who your shared customers are, and what success means to them in terms of the products or services they buy from you.

12. How you know this is what they want?

Often, companies guess about what their customers want. Or they may assume they know better than their customers do about what’s important or valuable to them.

Few companies last long if they follow this, “We know what’s best for you” strategy with customer needs and requirements.

Don’t be one of them.

These 12 questions, and your answers to one or more of them can go a long way toward helping you start to solve the problems that typically cause you pain now.

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish. Sign up for the newsletter here.

An end-of-year, or end-of-project, assessment can be as simple as this:

- Did you meet your goals, or beat them?

- Or did you miss them?

- Why, and how?

That’s all you REALLY need to know to understand if you’ve been successful, right?

Not so fast.

Real success means much more than just “hitting your numbers” by the end of the year, or the end of a project.

Success that’s worth more than its weight in gold prepares you for the future, too.

Real success makes you:

- More confident because of what you’ve experienced (or survived).

- More able to repeat or improve on successes and challenges from the past.

- More skilled in seeing problems that may occur before they happen and so, more able to prevent or minimize them if they do.

- More able to dream big and do big because you trust yourself. You know now that you can experiment and adapt your way through unexpected events and challenges.

Set aside some time before the year ends to understand what you think and feel about the year that’s ending, as well as the year that’s about to begin.

Consider these questions, for starters:

1. What were your 2011 goals?

2. Did you meet them or miss them?

3. Why and how?

4. What have you learned this year that can help you in the year ahead?

5. What are your goals for 2012?

Make sure they’re written as SMART goals: specific, measurable, appropriately aggressive yet attainable, relevant and time-bound.

6. How do you want to be different at the end 2012? For example, what:

- Actions do you need to take?

- Knowledge and skills do you need to acquire

- Beliefs do you need to have or change?

- Habits do you need to drop or improve?

- How can you make these changes most easily?

7. What’s your biggest fear about the year ahead? What can you do to prevent or minimize the impact of it, if it does happen?

8. If you were to REALLY “wow!” yourself by the end of 2012, what would have happened? How?

9. What assumptions are you making about your 2012 goals, and the process of reaching them? How can you test or challenge these assumptions, and change them if it turns out you’re wrong?

10. What support do you need for the year ahead? How can you get it most  effectively and easily?

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish. Sign up for the newsletter here.

“I’m afraid of what I don’t know,” the CEO of the rapidly growing company said to me.

“And I’m afraid of what I can’t see.”

He feared dire circumstances could wipe out his thriving company.

This CEO was worried enough that he longed for an early warning system…if there were a way to create one.

So I did. It was like solving a high-risk puzzle, or providing an action-oriented dashboard that would guide them through improvements, gradually.

And then we made sure the decision-making and prioritization framework would serve his company.

Do you, too, long for a sense of command in otherwise challenging and unpredictable circumstances?

Do you ever wish for an early warning system such as this CEO had?

If so, here are the basic steps we used to create this busy company’s early warning system:

– Start with your fears

We called this the “edge of cliff” analysis, and started with the CEO’s greatest fears.

He had lived with heavy but ambiguous worry for some time.

He hadn’t yet articulated his fears clearly, so that he could turn them into something positive and actionable.

– Turn them into scenarios

We considered his worst-case scenarios and the probable consequences of each for his clients and company.

We also considered best-case scenarios (they are so much more fun to think about…and we needed those for a bit of relief).

And then we considered what would happen if the best were even better, and the worst were even worse than we imagined.

This stretched our sense of what the early warning system needed to accommodate, and flag for preventative, or adaptive action.

–  Make your early warning system goal clear

Identify what you want your early warning system to do for you.

Then consider who will use the information, and what they will do with it.

Check in with the future users of the information to see what they need to make the information readily usable, and actionable.

– Gather external information

I had to find a proxy for customer satisfaction and frustrations, in lieu of talking directly to customers.

I looked to see what promises were made or implied to customers through the company’s marketing and advertising materials.

This told me what processes inside the company had to work flawlessly, under all different circumstances, no matter what was happening outside the company.

– Synthesize

Working with the leadership team, I verified and clarified which processes had to be top-notch in order for them to continue to thrive.

We mapped this to the most likely scenarios they might face, and identified which processes put them at highest risk, if they were not strengthened and improved.

– Organize and communicate

We organized and simplified the work, making it easy to understand and use.

We had no interest in creating a system that just looked good on paper. We wanted one that would be successful in real life and real business.

We then trained people, helping them see what valuable part they played in making the early warning system work successfully.

The early warning system turned out to be a combination of crystal ball, fire drill, and strategic change management system all rolled into one.

If you need an early warning system, and would like guidance and support as you do so, let me know. 

If enough people are interested, I’ll create a class to teach and guide you through the process.

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As year-end looms and you work to meet the year’s final goals, here are two of many possible scenarios:

You’re:

- Good for the finish line.

You have the right time, money, energy, attention, skills and other resources you need to get the job done.

- Hoping miracles are real…because you need one now.

In this case, resources may be limited, or poorly aligned with your goals.

Priorities may be unclear, or absent.

Skills, knowledge and experience available to get the job done may be less than what you now know are necessary to be successful in the way the year has worked out.

If you’re in that hoping-for-a-miracle situation, well, remember that you’re not alone.

Many people and teams are discovering the same thing at this point in the year, like it or not.

Sometimes circumstances and priorities in life get all tangled up. And when a deadline is looming – like year-end – the situation only seems worse.

You can improve next year’s plans.

You can improve next year’s implementation.

For now, focus on doing the best you can in the situation you have.

What, then, can you do to untangle the knot and get as much done as possible, as well as possible, before the end of the year is here?

Here are a few ways to tighten your focus and increase your chances of success:

1. Remember – or get clear about – what your goal is.

2. Recall who you’re doing your work for, and what they consider success to be.

3. Get out your map (or, more likely, project plan) leading you to to the finish line.

4. See if it still makes sense, and if not, adjust it so it will work in present circumstances.

5. Figure out where you are on that map or project plan.

6. See and take the next most natural, most obvious step.

7. Repeat as needed.

And all of that is easy to say…but sometimes hard to do.

Wires can just get crossed, and the primary target lost in the confusion, disarray or shuffle.

When that happens find ways to go back to square one to review and recharge, renewing your strong sense of your target, purpose and path there.

Let extraneous things fall away.

Focus your attention, resources and energy on what’s most important.

Here are just a few simple things that may help you regain perspective:

- Take a drive.

Sometimes when you see your office, home or city in the rear view mirror, perspective “magically” returns. Distance and movement away from present circumstances can bring much-needed perspective.

- Take a walk.

The same perspective-gaining principle applies here, except that you’re getting the big picture from nature, and immersion in it, even briefly.

- Review your vision.

If you have a vision of your desired outcome – in whatever form you recorded and saved it – review that.

Pre-experience it, and imagine achieving it, in great detail.

- Listen to satisfied customers.

Remind yourself why you do the work you do.

Review reminders of the great work you’ve done for customers in the past, and are doing in the present.

Listen to or read customer testimonials and review customer feedback.

In easy but effective ways, remind yourself once again why you do the work you do, for the people you serve through it.

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Is there a chance that something you KNOW to be true about your business and industry…isn’t true?

If you saw the movie, “Moneyball,” or read the book, “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game” by Michael Lewis, you know where I’m going with this.

In that case, you also know that Oakland A’s baseball general manager (GM) Billy Beane and a few data-savvy staff members changed the way that baseball teams are built.

Driven by a far lower budget than other teams had, Beane sought a better way to create and manage a winning team.

He succeeded by diving into once-obscure player statistics to create a surprising, and surprisingly successful team.

Beane studied and acted on such things as on-base percentage, a statistic that other teams often quickly skimmed as they selected players and managed them using historical – yet incorrect – models of what led to baseball success.

“Moneyball” might have lessons for your company, too.

Consider these aspects of the basic story:

Beane understood that the way potential players were assessed and selected was wrong. He knew this in spite of the industry-standard, industry-expected, industry-accepted way of doing things.

How was he so certain of that?

He knew it because he had been one of the golden prospects about whom the scouts were off-base as they assessed his past performance and future potential.

The real problem for Billy Beane was that he wasn’t fearless in the batter’s box and didn’t have the deep drive to succeed as a professional athlete that the game requires…no matter how physically talented that athlete is.

When he was building a baseball team as a GM, he was in his element.

Beane had to change the game of building a team because of financial constraints he had that competing teams didn’t.

He and the data-loving members of his staff (and others, I suspect) thrived on the challenge and the results that the record-breaking team produced under this strategy.

As the A’s won against much wealthier teams, those teams started to look closely at what Oakland was doing to produce results that were clearly more than just a fluke.

How could your business benefit from a moneyball approach to seeing and managing the details that lead most directly to the success you seek…no matter what your industry’s accepted approach may be?

Try these things:

1. Know what your key assumptions are about what leads to success for your company and in your industry.

2. Question your key assumptions.

3. Question them again.

4. Consider what might be true, instead, if something else is.

5. Create and conduct experiments of what might work better than what you’ve been doing up to this point.

6. Observe what happens.

7. Adjust your success-production process, as need be.

8. Repeat the cycle until you’re able to more easily produce the desired outcomes.

9. Enjoy and celebrate the improved results.

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish. Sign up for the newsletter here.