Write Your Own Future

Winston Churchill was quoted as saying:

History will be kind to me, because I intend to write it.”

Winston Churchill

As a business owner or a department head, are you allowing external and internal influences to write your future?

Re-writing the future

When you look back at the end of the year to see what you’ve achieved, did you actually achieve what you would like to? Well, the start of 2013 is a great opportunity to look at the areas where you can re-write your future.

Who are your gatekeepers?

Often the things holding your business back are internal – the people we call gatekeepers. These people are often responsible for key projects and areas of a business, and yet they're too busy to listen to new ideas, have no motivation to read, research or hear from other people internally. Sometimes they are threatened by suggestions that they haven't thought of, they might be fearful of job security or think they know it all. Unless they change, they are the people who will hold your business back.

Changing Gatekeepers into Gateways

Empower people and change the expectation

When I took over the managing director’s role at DDB Needham Advertising, I realized that if I was going to allow external media, other people, and these internal gatekeepers to influence our business, we would not be writing our future. Other people would be. So we put in place a process whereby key people were empowered to provide solutions and empowered to make decisions. In fact it became an expectation in their review that they were to bring some new thinking to the business.

Start with yourself

So you have to decide this year, do you want a business that will be the same and probably go backwards, or are you going to embrace the changes in the marketplace that influence the way your customer is thinking today.

Keep yourself up to date on changes in social media, Internet & customer expectations.
Expect your people to embrace new thinking, to change and move forward.
Don’t allow yourself or your gatekeepers to hold your business back.

This year writes your future, and it starts today.

Peter Irvine
www.peterirvine.com
Peter is Co-Founder of Gloria Jean’s Coffees, author of ‘Win In Business’ and ‘Building your Business, your People, your Life’ and keynote speaker.

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