Look for the Geese

Hello Everyone,
Welcome to the Lion's den once again. Hope you all had a great week. Last week I wrote about hanging in there to succeed. A common question that I got was "what do I look for to know I am making progress while hanging on as the results haven't started to show?" There seems to be so much focus on the end results and the frustration felt if they were not coming fast enough. In my reponses, I looked at this from either the expectation or the clarity of the road map to the end goal.

There is an old saying that which goes "expectation is the mother of dissapointment". I have found in a lot of cases where the expecations were very unrealist or not grounded on solid clear actions to deliver them. It was as if all you needed was a vision or a big idea and no tangible steps put in place to measure and track progress. Also given our religious disposition, setbacks were not anticipated and seen as strange. I hate to disappoint you but there are very few businesses or careers that are successful and sustained without a solid foundation and it takes time to build a foundation.

If you choose to plant a palm tree for investment, you must know that it takes between 5-7 years before it starts yielding any fruit. Until then, you have to tend it and not expect any return in the short term.Understanding this allows you to decide if to plant other short term crops like maize to live on until the palm starts to yield. As with the palm tree and other crops are careers and businesses. The investments and returns are all different so to expect same can lead to frustrations and disappointment.

Understanding how to measure progress is also critical . Focusing on only the end results can lead to the wrong decision like giving up. In one of my previous roles, I sat in conference call with our head office where a decision was going to be made to scrap a brand because the monthly sales revenues were not growing. I disagreed and secured an additional period of grace for three months. I could do that because I had looked underneath the surface and saw that the brand was growing slowly and the negative trend showing was as a result of trade returns following a launch that was ambittious and offtake slow. The product quality was good and if we fixed the pricing and distribution, we had a big opportunity in our hands

With the support of the supply director, made some changes to ensure no returns, fixed the price and started to watch the brand grow slowly. I remember being asked regularly, we can't see these green shoots you talk about when we reviewed the performance as the volume was still slow. It took about 6 months for us to hit critical mass and brand exploded and was the fastest growing within Africa @ 800%.  The President of the region asked when he visited, what gave you the confidence that this was going to work despite the inital slow results? I said it's simple, I always scratch underneath the surface to look for signs of progress and not the final number. Doing that showed me what we needed to fix to get the growth we wanted.

What have you been struggling with for a while and wondering if you made the right business or career decision? Look back and check if your expectations were right. Also scratch underneath the surface .Are you looking for the geese in the field? What are the secondary indicators you should be looking that show what is happening to reassure you that you are making progress? I can assure you that looking crtically from those perspectives can re-energize you to hang on , make the right decisions and follow up with actions that can secure your end goal.

Have a great week ahead and good luck in all that you do.God bless us all.

Kind regards.
Alex Goma aka Teranga Lion