🚀 Discipline of Speed
🥊 Be Like Muhammad Ali
🛒 Look for Constants
🚀 Discipline of Speed
It’s no accident why some companies have better brands than others. The companies that have the most iconic brands are the best executors. They take ideas and they make them happen — fast!
For instance, Tesla set up its Shanghai Gigafactory in 168 working days. This was from permits to a finished plant, and it is 9,300,000 sq ft with 2,000 employees.
That’s unheard of. Under the best of circumstances, it takes 2 years to build a factory, and I guarantee it’s not as big or complex as the Shanghai Gigafactory.
Your company has greater capacity to execute than you may recognize. To paraphrase John Maxwell, a team may overestimate what they can do in a month but underestimate what they can achieve in a year.
Strategy is a process, not an event. The more frequently you can work on your strategy and put ideas into action the faster you can grow.
As a best practice, implement a weekly strategy huddle.
By making strategy a weekly practice, you emphasize strategy execution. You can’t hide behind missed deliverables and unexecuted ideas if you’re talking about them each week.
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🥊 Be Like Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali famously said, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”
He had an uncanny ability to spot opportunities, move quickly and strike. He dominated in the ring by out moving and out striking his opponents.
As Ali told Liston in their pre-fight weigh-in, “Your hands can’t hit what your eyes can’t see.”
Driving business growth follows a similar set of principles: spot opportunities, act, measure, and adapt.
Companies that act and learn faster will outpace their competitors.
Muhammad Ali went into the ring with a strategy: hit first, hit fast, keep moving. He wasn’t waiting to respond to his opponent. He was looking for opportunities.
It’s a great philosophy to adopt. If you’re adapting quickly, your competition won’t know where you’re heading next, and from your vantage point they’ll seem slow and sluggish.
🛒 Look for Constants
When you’re dealing with disruption, look for constants.
Speaking at an Amazon Web Services conference, an audience member asked Jeff Bezos what he thought would change over the next 10 years.
Bezos replied, “I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one. I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two, because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time.”
He continued, “In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that’s going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery. They want vast selection… When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.”
What are the constants in your business? How can you anchor your strategy to what won’t change?
🤔 Thoughts on Today’s Issue?
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