Looking at research and most common practices of business leaders today, shocking is the prevailing focus on the negative…the challenges…the “what’s wrong” (or if you like, the “WT” aka the weaknesses and threats). Also in our private lives, as many different research studies prove, we tend to not only focus on the negative event, but remember them longer, hold on to them longer, craving to fix things that are not working out for us.
In the professional world it is not much different. Businesses and their leaders dedicate a lot of time to the negative. They put together an in-house taskforce or even hire an external company to find more and more gaps they need to fill and fix. Success is celebrated quickly (if at all), but then focus again shifts in the “what’s wrong” and “what are we not doing well” buckets piling with long list of items.
To know your flaws and understand your challenges as a business leader in depth is absolutely crucial. That is not the point we aim to make here. The observation we made is that the successes or the so-called “bright spots” are sometimes maybe celebrated and shared within the organization, but they are not given as much attention, nor are they analyzed in depth as the pain points faced.
But what’s wrong with that?
Well, mainly for SMEs, having limited resources (referring to people, finances, time and capacity), we believe it is crucial to dedicate more attention to analyze the bright spots in order to replicate success. What did work well in the past? How did we win clients before? What was key in closing deals or winning a proposal before? To analyze, understand and reproduce the past success is much easier and usually faster than investing in something new from your “what are we missing” list.
Some examples
For example, if majority of your business so far came from events, networking and referrals, focus on defining a clear event and networking strategy, cherishing your network, enhancing your speaker profile to be shared with cherry-picked event organizers, and gathering more references and testimonial to boost your awareness, credibility and reach.
On the other hand, if you had been getting noticed and approach with RFP via your website, focus there first. Get the positioning right. Communicate clearly your offering in a visually-attractive way. Enhance your SEO, connect your Social Media channels and be resourceful sharing relevant and valuable content with your target.
If your company reached the size and complexity, where “all” seems to play an important role in getting new business and attracting customers or clients, you should have a process for analyzing such bright spots to be shared centrally within your organization in order to give your teams the chance to replicate and even boost such success. You can set up a taskforce, but we are bigger fans of idea-sourcing methodology. Making every staff member a contributor by providing them access to an online space, where they can share their success stories, best practices and “what worked well” there allowing staff or leaders from other departments or country-offices to learn from your success, replicate it and …even enhance it.
Reflection point
- Are your ignoring or replicating success with Bright Spot analysis?
- What practices and tools do you use for success, best practice and innovation sharing?
