“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” – Jim Rohn
There are a lot of leaders out there who aren’t really leading their business; they’re managing (or simply working for) someone else’s business. They may technically own it, or may have a job title that implies something great, but it’s really all fake. They’re simply dealing with whatever comes along, whenever it comes along, for whomever comes along.
Too many of those ‘leaders’ spend their entire careers reacting to events & responding to requests without ever taking the wheel themselves. They convince themselves that what leaders do is watch everybody around them and take some kind of corrective action whenever outside forces push on the business. And certainly, there are outside forces that push on your business, and sometimes a course correction is required.
But that can’t be all you do. You can’t have your head down all the time. You can’t just wait for things to happen and then hope that you simply make the best of it. You have to be looking ahead. You have to be thinking about the future and consciously working out what you want that future to look like. You can’t end up in a situation that just sort of happened on its own and pretend that you’re job as a leader.
So think about that future. Think about the challenges that you expect to face over the next few years. What are they? Do they have to do with people? Or customers? Or products? Whatever it is, think about what you think the issue will be. Now ask yourself how you wish that issue could be resolved. How specifically would you like to see it turn out?
Now you have a picture in your head. Congratulations! Now here’s the tricky part. What do you have to do to make that happen? What changes have to be made in how you do business? How you serve your customers? How you handle your employees? Start thinking through the steps you have to take to get there – and then start taking them.
Some leaders make things happen. Others have things happen to them. The rest wonder what happened. Only one of those groups can legitimately claim to be doing their job as leaders, and you know which one it is. Be in that group. Start making things happen.
