Ready to turn uncertainty to competitive advantage?
Everyone is talking about the uncertainty in the marketplace right now. What is going to happen with interest rates? Is inflation going to keep going down or will it spike again? From economic uncertainty to political uncertainty, everyone is stuck wondering how is all of this going to impact consumers and our ability to grow our businesses? The good news is, it is possible to embrace all this change and turn today's uncertainty into competitive advantage.
When Will This Uncertainty End?
I was on a zoom call with a client just this past week having a conversation about this constant disruption. We were discussing my keynote, THRIVE: Turning Uncertainty To Competitive Advantage, and what he most wanted me to deliver to his audience. What were the strategies, mindset and feelings he wanted them to walk away with at the end of the presentation?
His response?
“I want you to tell our members when this will be over, when all of this uncertainty will end, and when things will go back to normal.”
I listened and then laughed (to myself of course), and said I have some good news and some bad news for you. Where do you want me to start? He, of course, said give me the bad news first.
The Truth About Uncertainty
The biggest myth we have about uncertainty is that it will end. The truth about uncertainty is that it never ends, it is ongoing and a constant.
Think back through the last few years. We have experienced COVID, supply chain issues, the Great Resignation, war in Ukraine, and the list goes on.
You can study history and easily see that uncertainty is a part of life and there will always be various levels of uncertainty taking place. Sometimes it is something as big and impactful as an economic recession. Sometimes uncertainty is just new competitors or technological advancements. Either way, disruption is something you must not only get used to, but something you have to get comfortable with if you want to make uncertainty work for you.
Now the good news!
Uncertainty (when you own it, have a plan for it) can be your greatest opportunity to transform your organization, your team and your customers. When you embrace uncertainty, it sparks innovation and creativity, it increases engagement, and all of those fuel results and growth. In other words, you can turn uncertainty to competitive advantage.
So I told my client there is no end to the uncertainty, and I could not tell his members that this would end. What I could do was give them a new perspective, and arm them with the tools and the strategies to embrace uncertainty and start to control the changes coming in the marketplace, rather than allowing all of this change to control them.
He was happy with this plan, to say the least!
3 Important Tips To Turn Uncertainty To Competitive Advantage
Shift Your Mindset
Pain comes from resistance, period. If you are waiting for the pace of change to slow, waiting for things to go back to normal, or waiting for all of this uncertainty to stop, then you are going to be waiting a very long time. You need to shift your mindset, and understand that uncertainty is a constant, something you must learn to live with and grow through.
Predict Change
Once you accept that change is a constant, rather than waiting for change to happen, you can start to predict the changes coming in the marketplace. See, we hate change, because we feel like it is something done to us. What if you could start to think about change BEFORE it happens? Start to come up with thoughts, ideas of what changes are coming and start to make changes now.
We do this in our personal lives all the time – we plan for retirement, cut back on spending when we think recession is coming, help our parents plan for their later years. WE need to do this in business too.
Listen and Learn
While there is no way to know how change will impact you or your business, listening to customers, team members and your industry will help you start to identify both patterns and trends that will show you the path to growth and profitability. There is so much power in listening to learn how uncertainty will impact you.
So while I cannot put an end to uncertainty, I can give you the tools and information to shift how you think, feel and act about uncertainty and turn uncertainty to competitive advantage.
Let’s do this!
