Owner-driven Businesses: it’s time to embrace a Leadershift.

19 Jun Owner-driven Businesses: it’s time to embrace a Leadershift.

‘We are all faced with a series of great opportunities, brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.’

~ Charles R Swindoll

The first half of this year hasn’t been what anybody expected. It’s been particularly hard on owner-driven businesses. Occasional flashes of positive news fall like passing showers over a parched landscape, only to disappear behind the rising statistics of the pandemic. And skepticism mars positivity once again.

The Covid-19 crisis has caused severe disruptions. Owner-driven businesses are finding themselves at a historic crossroad, have embraced this unique window of opportunity to reshape their recovery, opting to onboard professional leadership talent, as they forge a determinate path towards the future.

From our consulting assignments with forward-thinking, owner-driven enterprises, here are some unique leadershifts in thinking that are accelerating their reinvention.

• The belief that ‘we alone hold the joystick,’ is giving way to the realization that: ‘maybe it’s time to delegate authority!’
• The assurance of retaining control over the business via the family appointees and a few loyalists is steadily opening up the doors to the search for professional business leaders, to cast vision and steer direction.
• The shift in thinking that business is all about profits first, has brought on the realization that it’s all about people first.
• The ‘let’s wait and watch posture,’ is changing to a more proactive, ‘let’s not get caught napping on the watch’ strategy.

Other insights owner-driven businesses have discovered over these months are:

• The crisis continues to highlight every pre-Covid spot, wrinkle or blemish within the organisation, separating real leaders from wannabes.
• True leadership has always been informed less by what’s happening on the outside and more by what’s established on the inside. Or rather, by how big the leader’s vision is.
• Retrospecting about the uncomplicated past or getting anxious of the uncertain future will, at the moment be an exercise in futility. The focus is on today and, what we boldly create today and innovate successfully, will hold promise for tomorrow.

From a practical standpoint, here are some result-oriented areas owner-driven businesses can focus on:

• Prioritizing on achieving the visioned goals and harnessing what is on hand as we blaze fresh trails into the future. 
• Astute business planning occurs in tranquility, stemming from an ordered mind. It’s never the product of impulsiveness governed by emotionalism, anxiety or the urgent need to prove something.
• Creating a new vision can be a daunting, unsettling, even terrifying for many owner-driven businesses. But this is our reset opportunity to create and shape the future, by turning impossible situations into brilliant opportunities.

We are in an unprecedented situation. Opportunities, therefore, are plenty indeed. And the need of the hour is to transition our leadership into a leadershift, in order to thrive in the brave new world ahead! Comments, feedback, ideas, welcome!