Position Your Organization for the Future

When you are a leader, you have to do more than make sure things go right today. You must also be forward thinking—as what you do today creates the future you want tomorrow.

Here are some reminders to help ensure you meet the challenges ahead.

1. Keep on top of trends. Keep your finger on the pulse of change both within and outside your organization to ensure that your team can hold its own.
2. Become a champion for change. View change as an opportunity and an adventure, not as a threat. Your outlook on change will have a profound impact on the ways your employees experience it.
3. Hire, reward and promote the best and brightest. Develop human resource systems that identify, train, promote and reward those people.
4. Train, counsel, reprimand or terminate marginal performers. Don't waste your time or energy carrying employees kicking and screaming into the future. If they aren't prepared to move ahead, help them get jobs with your competitors.
5. Think globally, act locally. Niche markets are being created around the globe. Think about how your organization's products and services could satisfy customers somewhere else.
6. Innovate or abdicate. Whatever you are doing for external or internal customers, you must constantly produce it better, cheaper and quicker. If you aren't prepared to innovate, then prepare for customer problems.
7. Invest in technology, people and training. Stop thinking like an accountant and start thinking like a strategic team leader. Don't view money spent on technology, people and training as a cost, but rather as an investment.
8. Stress innovation and adaptation in your talks with employees. Keep employees on the edge of their seats, not resting comfortably in easy chairs.
9. Fight the complacency of success. Success can be a barrier to change when you begin to think there's no reason for improvement.
10. Don't get tied down by sunk costs. There is a cost associated with staying on top of trends. Some leaders won't buy new equipment because of the money spent on last year's technology. Others are reluctant to support new training because of the cost incurred in the old training. But, whatever the investment, such an attitude can hold you and your organization back as times change.

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