"'Wait and see' is the business plan for obsolescence." - Futurist Jim Carroll
Organizations and individuals stifle their success by waiting around.
You know it's true - are you guilty of it? Go through this list - it's my Wait and See Playbook. Get it here. It's all about the excuses you are making right now!
Start here:
- "We need more clarity.". This common excuse prevents organizations from taking necessary action in uncertain times, as it demands perfect information before moving forward. You'll be waiting forever!
- "We're just waiting to see what happens.". This is fear disguised underneath inaction. You'll be waiting a long time.
- "It's not the right time for this.". When will it be the right time? You could be waiting a long time!
- "We can't act until we know what's going on.". This paralysis-by-analysis approach assumes complete information is possible and necessary. We might not know how this 'thing' causing all this volatility will unfold.
- "We'll wait until things stabilize." Maybe things won't. So what now?
- "We just need to cut some spending." While cost-cutting can be necessary, using it as the only strategy focuses exclusively on survival rather than adaptation and growth, potentially cutting muscle along with fat. You'll shrink your way to irrelevance.
- "Our priority is margins, not risky experiments." This is short-term thinking that prioritizes immediate financial metrics over the innovation necessary for long-term relevance and growth. Winners never do that.
- "There's simply no budget for R&D right now." This excuse treats innovation as a luxury rather than a necessity. That should never be the case.
- "It's too risky; we have to play it safe." This excuse confuses inaction with safety; in volatile markets, standing still is often the riskiest position of all.
- "The stakes are too high to allow for any failure." This perfectionist mindset prevents experimentation and risk, which is exactly what you SHOULD be focusing on.
- "It makes more sense to just stick with what we know." This comfort-seeking behaviour ignores how quickly markets and industries change, leaving companies with outdated products and approaches as the future evolves.
- "We have to be really cautious right now." This excuse elevates caution above all other values, including innovation, growth, and adaptation, which creates a culture of fear rather than strategic risk.
- "We're just going to hunker down and wait it out." You might be waiting a long time. In the meantime, the future happened.
- "We'll just wait till things get back to normal." This is a backward-looking excuse that assumes a return to past conditions, when markets rarely revert to previous states and "normal" is constantly being redefined.
- "Doing nothing is probably the safest thing right now." Doing nothing is a death sentence.
How do you get around that? By overcoming these actions. I detailed that in this PDF!
Start here:
- Lead from the Future, Not the Present. Paint a picture of tomorrow. Move towards it, not back. Stop standing still,
- Embrace "Agile Strategy". Be fast. Adopt short-term plans. Get into a mindset of continuous, iterative innovation.
- Become an "Opportunity Accelerator". It's volatile, uncertain, and you've got a negative mindset. Focus - relentlessly - on opportunity. Ask your team what new possibilities the chaos creates.
- Weaponize Curiosity. Institute a culture of relentless questioning - reward employees who challenge assumptions and ask "what if". Get rid of stale thinking.
- Lead with "Decisive Optimism". Acknowledge the challenges, but project unwavering confidence in your ability to overcome them. Tone matters.
- Launch "Skunkworks" Missions. Authorize and protect small, autonomous teams to work on high-risk, high-reward projects. Get dirty faster!
- Empower people. Stop micromanaging - give your people enough rope to move forward, make decisions, and commit to action.
- Implement a "Failure Quota". Reward risk, don't penalize it. Celebrate the learning that comes from failed experiments.
- Appoint a "Chief De-bureaucratizer". Get rid of organizational sclerosis! Make red tape that holds back innovation your chief target!
- Mandate "Reverse Mentorship". Pair senior leaders with your youngest, most digitally-native employees. Get younger!
- Host "Future-Back" Scenarios. Instead of forecasting from the present forward, run workshops where you imagine it's 2030 and work backward. This exercise forces long-term thinking and makes it clear why waiting is not an option.
- Invest in Resilience, Not Just Efficiency. Build redundancy and flexibility into everything. Make sure you can absorb shocks and adapt quickly, making volatility an advantage, not a threat.
- Tie Incentives to Boldness, Not Just Predictability. Rethink compensation and promotion criteria to reward employees for launching experiments, challenging the status quo, and taking calculated risks. People should get paid for not waiting, but because they can see.
- Communicate with Radical Transparency. In a vacuum of information, your team will assume the worst. Share what you know and, more importantly, what you don't know. Be clear on what needs to be done.
- Model the Behavior Yourself—Visibly. Be a leader - someone who is seen as bold, moving forward, setting the tone!
Oh, and buy a copy of Dancing in the Rain - How Bold Leaders Grow Stronger in Stormy Times, because the material for this post was drawn from the book! Get it here: dancing.jimcarroll.com. You can even grab a few sample chapters on the site. Because, why wait? Get moving!
It's what you need right now!
Futurist Jim Carroll is seeing a lot of people and organizations spinning their wheels right now, waiting for some big event to happen that will more clearly define the future. He knows that this is precisely the wrong thing to do!