Learning to Manage Opportunity in the Unknown

Daniel Burrus

We all manage something in our lives. Whether we manage other people, an entire organization, sales or even just ourselves, management is part of our everyday lives and includes careful planning, well-thought-out direction and a sense of control.

What happens when we apply that definition of management to the concept of opportunity?

What if we were to identify and act upon opportunity much as we arrange and then manage a meeting, a project or some other form of responsibility that takes place each day in our lives?

What transformative opportunity does that foster for your organization?

Take Anticipatory Action, Not Agile Reaction One element of being a manager is the necessity of reacting to crises. This COVID-19 global pandemic we presently find ourselves in is the perfect example. In the wake of the coronavirus, I’m sure you have had to manage a crisis or two you never before thought plausible, yet somehow you overcome it every day.

Crisis is a form of change or disruption coming from outside of your organization that greatly impacts the status quo and must be dealt with. That is a perfect description of what the coronavirus pandemic has done to us all, no matter what industry we find ourselves in. However, COVID-19 and other forms of disruption and perceived crises aren’t the problem; the real issue is when your response as a leader is solely reactionary and habitual.

No matter how agile or clever you are, repeatedly reacting to problems and issues will eventually be a never-ending cycle. This is why change must happen by way of implementing anticipation—allowing you to become an opportunity manager instead of a crisis manager.

What Is an Opportunity Manager? What does it mean to become an opportunity manager instead of a crisis manager? Among other things, it means being anticipatory, paying attention to what I refer to as Hard Trends (projections based on measurable, tangible, and fully predictable facts, events, or objects) shaping your industry and pre-solving problems before they occur. An opportunity manager looks for opportunities, identifies them, acts on them and refines them. An opportunity manager is a positive disruptor. More specifically, here are three attributes of an opportunity manager:

1. You create change rather than having to react to it.

Instead of reacting to change, you effectively create change. Rather than reacting to an outside factor, like a nationwide shutdown of nonessential businesses that most business leaders never anticipated, you’re reversing these effects and creating change from inside your organization.

2. You are a positive disruptor.

As I mentioned, you create the disruption instead of being disrupted by it. This pandemic has created a “new normal”—so merely waiting for disruption to hit you is a poor choice. New innovation is needed, so creating positive disruption from inside your organization allows you to stay ahead of the innovation curve.

3. You use disruption to your advantage.

Not only do you create the change and control the disruption before it disrupts you, but you’re also the anticipatory one who’s leveraging disruption to your advantage. For example, instead of attempting to protect the status quo (as most are doing in reaction to COVID-19), you find ways to use that disruption as an opportunity to innovate, continue to serve customers and possibly even continue to offer said service once the pandemic is over. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Become an Opportunity Manager Becoming an opportunity manager means first developing an anticipatory mindset. For instance, one of the salient principles of my Anticipatory Organization Learning System is Hard Trends, which are future certainties that you know will impact both you and your organization.

Take a few moments to consider what Hard Trends could drastically affect you, your organization and your industry as we come out of this pandemic. Likewise, think about the possible problems and opportunities that you can foresee those Hard Trends bringing with them for you or your customers. What can you do now to not only pre-solve those problems before they become detrimentally disruptive, but also leverage those Hard Trends into game-changing opportunities?

A good example of a Hard Trend is the reality that there will be greater changes in regulation of brick-and-mortar businesses as they reopen into the “new normal” COVID-19 has left us in. For example, the Las Vegas entertainment industry, which makes up nearly all business in lower Nevada and relies on in-person contact much of the time, must reopen safely.

An opportunity manager looks at opportunity within the framework of both time and effort. What opportunities are more immediate and mandate less effort, and what opportunities require a longer time frame and greater commitment?

For Las Vegas, the immediate opportunities are most pertinent, and an example of an opportunity manager in this case is a local billboard printer who began making custom-fitted plexiglass shields, allowing individuals to play cards at a table while being separated from one another.

In the face of the unknown, it is time to transform your role from a crisis manager to an opportunity manager.

Daniel Burrus is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and disruptive innovation experts. He is a strategic advisor to executives helping them to develop game-changing strategies based on his proven methodologies for capitalizing on technology innovations. He is the author of seven books, including The New York Times bestseller Flash Foresight, and his latest book The Anticipatory Organization. He offers monthly Strategic Deep Dive Webinars through an Anticipatory Leader Membership program. You can contact Daniel at www.Burrus.com | office@burrus.com. Illustration: © iStock/z_wei