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Long-term strategies and short-term operational excellence.
Every day I see companies make short-term decisions and decide that they will not hire the intern or the college student etc.
How did they get into that place?
I understand all to well the pressures on business. My role as a business, human resource architect of solutions that turns around business to profitability is to balance both the short term without sacrificing the long term.
What is clear to me is that strategies come in many “time frames”
My mantra is: You must do today to protect your future, without sacrificing today!
- Always have a clear vision of your mission. Never take your eye of the goal. You lose this and you may as well pack up and go home.
- Your game plan is to continue to reach those goals.
- Key metrics are absolutely essential AND the competences to identify them and deliver them.
- There is no mission without margin so day to day focus on operational excellence is a MUST.
- A bright Tomorrow will not come if you don’t deliver operational focus today.
Business has to ensure it has competences that deliver today AND the long term.
Too many are tempted to go for one at the expense of the other.
That is why many companies spend “ oodles” of dollars to train and develop their work force only to lay them off at the first sign of lower profits.
Remember: there are Six things business has to be great at…. at the SAME time.
- Operational Excellence.
- Strategic development of its core business platform.
- Long term partnering.
- Developing a curious leadership talent throughout its employee workforce.
- Keep the momentum going, once you lose that “sense of urgency” for the LONG TERM all you are doing is surviving.
- Nimbleness of thought and customer anticipation is paramount.
Picture : credit google images
“Par is what I shot today.”
Now not everyone is a golfer. This quote from Willie Nelson made me think however about how we think about ourselves and how sometimes the “little” things drive us so blindingly hard.
It is sometimes easy to forget to enjoy who we already are and the friendships and life already lived.
Now I know that for millions of golfers shooting Par golf is a sublime dream and no “little” thing.
We all have dreams. I think it is important that we have them.
Lets make sure that our dreams keep us grounded and deliver the best of ourselves.
There are many out there whose pursuit of their dream makes them people we do not want to be around.
Being reflective, being able to laugh at ourselves; enjoying life and knowing that we have so little time on this planet and doing the very best we can is already a life fulfilled.
Was this not the dream of our parents? They simply wanted us to be good people and be kind to others and have a good life.
Enjoying who you are is as important as who you want to be. Don’t let the one diminish the other.
A catfish in all of us!
Just saw a movie documentary called catfish!
The scene at the end of this fascinating movie is such:
“Sitting on his front porch, Vince tells the story that gives the film its name. He claims that when live cod were shipped to Asia from North America, the fish’s inactivity in their tanks resulted in mushy flesh in the Asian markets.
Eventually, the fishermen discovered that putting catfish in the tanks with the cod kept them active. Vince feels that people like Angela are catfish, who keep other people active in life.”
This is life!; we all need someone to nip at our tails from time to time.
We all need that motivational adrenaline kick. Or we would go to mush too.
Whatever the truth of the movie, it reminds us that we need to keep a fresh outlook on life or we will go stale.
Let’s go and find ourselves some catfish or be one our selves, we owe it to others and ourselves. Life is to short. So let’s find the Catfish in all of us
HRMexplorer's Blog - Human Resources 