Positional Leadership

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Creating the Future you want

Positional leaders create their futures by inventing new products and services, or carving out market niches in which they excel and lead. They look far into the future and become the change agent. They get a jump on the competition by exploring the invisible or underused potential that they may already have. Most people, however, can't even handle change much less lead it. Consider the following.

Did you ever wonder why some companies explode into giants while others explode into pieces? This is more than market share positioning; this is market creation. And it is rare. Microsoft exemplifies this positional leadership dynamic. You can love them or hate them but you cannot deny that they define for the world what computers will look like for a long time to come. Look what Ted Turner of CNN did to the industry and now watch what CNN and Microsoft are doing again with MSNBC.

Here are five suggestions to help you embrace and harness change with a vision of the future in your hand.

1. Overcoming genius: We often associate exceptional foresight with individual genius. And while genius may help, it can also hold you back while you concentrate on one person's ideas. The reality is that many of us have even greater potential if we use the creative energy of the people on our teams.

2. Stop looking at your watch and use your calendar. Finding the key to tomorrow requires a mental shift from our routine day-to-day, year-to-year existence. Get out of that temporal box. Organize planning sessions with only a strategic focus. Encourage and facilitate the paradigm stretch.

3. Use a change process. It takes time to break out of today's priorities. Schedule a meeting where you will not be interrupted and is long enough to change focus. Use creative thinking techniques and thought exercises such as brainwriting, brainstorming, visually identifying relationships, and the like. Have a trained facilitator design and lead you through a process that will work for you. Creative Problem Solving is a dynamic change process.

4. Bring the ideas back home. Once you've generated ideas that are out in left field, evaluate them carefully for those that are the seeds of change. Bring the seeds back to the present for planting and cultivating. Don't let them lie fallow, bring them to life as goals and action plans.

5. Just do it. Don't wait for the perfect time to envision your future. That time may never be found. If you're serious about wanting a successful future, take action today.

You need to know two things to make this process work: 1. Where you are today and, 2. Where you want to be tomorrow. Use these five tactics to create a vision for tomorrow and then make decisions every day to bring it into reality.

Positional leadership is more than prosperity and survival; it is leadership and power. Use change processes as tools to create change instead of getting run over by it. Don’t risk your future, create it.