How you manage your business during challenging times can be similar to parenting during transitions in life. Parents head families, while business owners and executives lead organizations. How both types of leaders operate under pressure may well determine their levels of success or failure.
Tough Times Call for Sharper Focus
In a family situation, there are certain milestones that are particularly challenging. It can be the birth of a child, an addition of a sibling, a graduation from high school and going away to college, a graduation from college and getting a job, a divorce that involves custody rights, a hospitalization or serious illness, a death and so on. All these situations require some kind of transition to a new way of life.
The business world has had its share of ups and downs in the past several decades. It’s come to the brink of a global depression, suffered from recession, battled high unemployment rates, had to rebuild economic infrastructure, gone through a stock market rollercoaster, seen companies and even countries go bankrupt, and yet, it has survived.
What does it take to lead effectively in tough times? It doesn’t require an MBA but it does require a sharp focus on the facts at hand, common sense, and the ability to influence or motivate others. It’s a lot like effective parenting and also, network marketing.