Forecasting: Will You 'Bunt' or 'Swing For The Fences?'
By Dave Anderson
Forty-seven percent of Fortune 500 Companies disappeared from the rankings list between 1980 and 1990. Over time, many of them began devoting too many resources to maintaining. They stopped swinging for the fences, choosing instead to bunt or to remain in the dugout. They focused less on winning and more on not losing.
When you stop bunting at forecast time and begin swinging for the fences, here are three actions you'll be forced to take more often-actions that will fuel greater success:
1. Take risks: Bold forecasts force you to take risks because you cannot attain bigger goals with standard operating procedures. Bold forecasts make you assault the status quo and begin making changes before you're stampeded into it. Many "successful" dealers are riding risk aversion into irrelevance. As Roberto Goziueta, former CEO of Coca Cola declared, "If you think you are going to be successful running your business in the next ten years the way you did the last ten years, you're out of your mind. In order to succeed, we have to disturb the present."
It's up to leaders to make the status quo look more dangerous than venturing into the unknown. Risk-taking is perilous because you may fail. But there is less danger in trying new things than waiting for sure things. Any new action has risks and costs, but they are outweighed by the risks and costs of comfortable inaction. So yes, risk can bring failure. But it can also bring breakthroughs. It establishes a competitive edge. Bold leaders chasing bold forecasts know it's better to take a risk and shoot themselves in the foot than to sit still and have a competitor shoot them through the head.
2. Create daily urgency: Bold forecasts force you to create daily urgency. Leaders create daily urgency by setting expectations high, focus on daily objectives and create a climate where people come to work to make something happen. Anyone can feel urgent during the weekends or the last ten days of the month. Bold forecasts cause you to maximize opportunities every day and lose the notion that there are "throw away" days: "No, we didn't sell much today because it's Wednesday" and the like. Managers coach salespeople daily and keep them focused. No one is allowed to pace himself. People with a bias towards action are hired and promoted; those without are replaced. Urgency becomes part of the culture. It creates a positive peer pressure that propels winners to new peaks and flushes out laggards.
3. Listen and collaborate: Bold forecasts force you to listen to others, actively seek out feedback and work more as teams than individuals. They do so because when goals are high, no one person has all the answers or can do it alone. Thus, successful leaders do not have the loudest voice but the readiest ear. A bold forecast rallies individuals around a common purpose. A premium is put on people over procedures and more meaning is added to their work. When you study teams at work, from vacationers on a white-water rafting expedition, to the platform team that developed the Dodge Viper, to climbers who ascend Mt. Everest, it's clear that the bigger the undertaking, the more team members must communicate, collaborate and depend upon one another. Bold forecasts cause you to work more closely as a team, set your ego aside and bring out the best from the human capital in your charge.
Bold forecasts force you to take other actions: train more effectively, upgrade your roster and uproot non-performers, empower others to act, change quickly, flatten hierarchy, reduce bureaucracy, replace supervisors who don't grow, develop leaders at all levels and make tough decisions. Setting bold forecasts draws out the drive in your winners. It replaces a dutiful, obedient workplace with one that's creative and inspired; and there's not a dealership in America that won't benefit from a little less obedience and a little more inspiration.
Consider what Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric, has to say about "think-big" forecasts.
"What we call 'stretch goals' simply means figuring out performance targets that are do-able, reasonable and within our capabilities, then raising them higher-much higher-toward goals that at the outset seem to require superhuman effort to achieve," he said. "We've found that by reaching for what appears to be impossible, we often do the impossible; and even when we don't quite make it, we inevitably wind up doing much better than we would have done. A stretch atmosphere replaces a grim, heads down determination to be as good as you have to be, and asks instead, how good can you be?"
Michelangelo said, "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it's too low and we reach it."
There are two ways to fail when you forecast: You can fail by not going far enough; or you can fail by going too far. The most successful organizations will fail via the latter route. They know that it's only in going too far that they ever get to find out how far they could go.
Dave Anderson is President of The Dave Anderson Corporation, a sales, management and leadership training concern. Dave conducts "Leading At The Next Level" workshops and publishes "Leading At The Next Level" newsletter. He is the author of Selling Above The Crowd: 365 Strategies For Sales Excellence and his Web site, www.learntolead.com, has free training articles and materials updated weekly. Dave is a member of The National Speaker's Association and conducts workshops and keynotes worldwide. danderson@dealeronline.com
