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What Do You Do?

Hi, this is Steve Shellenberger, with Becoming Your Best Global Leadership.

Not long ago, I had the opportunity to visit, in the New England area, just north of Boston, and the Cape, or it was at least in Cape and Manchester, Gloucestershire. It was a great area. This is an area in the history of the beginning of the United States, that really was made famous because of their tremendous cod catches. And there was a movie, they even called it “The Sacred Cod”, because they had a difficult time in agriculture because of the tremendous rock substance right under the surface there. And so, they found that they could live on cod, and this produced a tremendous industry. While we were there, we had the opportunity to see a documentary that actually was called “The Sacred Cod”. It was interesting because, in just the last 25 years, that industry not unlike many other industries that we see today, or economic challenges, or structure has gone from $114 million, right in this one little area of annual catch of cod, to $9 million this last year. The entire cod industry has been decimated. Well, there could be a lot of reasons, one is just because of how much they’ve exhausted the supply. The government has also done a number of studies to set the range of catch that can take place. But, regardless of what happens, the cod catch is down enormously. And so, people have sold their boats. You really don’t have an infrastructure there anymore. This is also followed what’s happened in Canada, where 25 years ago, they just shut down the cod industry. It’s finally starting to regrow, where they’re bringing back cod catches.

So the question is what do you do? And it was agonizing to watch the various players, as the filmmaker went out on the boats, and they talked about this great contrast of here’s what it used to be. This is just in our recent past, this is during our lifetimes. This is what it used to be where these harbors were full of bustling with the cod catches in the industry and all the related industries that supported it. The ice companies, to keep the cod fresh and so forth to almost nothing to where they had to go find other jobs, they had to lay off their people.

So the question is, is as we think about our businesses as leaders, or our organizations as leaders, what can we do to avoid that type of thing? And we see it over and over, and over again. We saw it with blackberries, we’ve seen it with the impact of Uber that’s come in on yellow cabs and in the shaver industry. So all of these types of changes that are taking place, what can we do as leaders to continue having…maintaining real growth over a long period of time? And so this is what the principles of highly successful leaders allows us to do, to think about the external environment, and what are the forces that may be impacting our business, and what can we do today to get to a better place? It’s this type of thinking that’s critical in order to sustain excellence and be among the best in your industry, and if we see changes then what can we do to adapt and get to a better place. So this is my invitation to each one of us today, to on an ongoing basis to an external environment analysis. It’s just a circle, you in the middle, what are all the forces that may impact us? And as you identify those biggest ones then you develop a plan with you and your organization of how do we get a better place. Well, this is Steve Shellenberger and it’s the principles the Five Minute Leadership Makeover, that will help get ideas of how to get into a better place you can go to that fiveminuteleadershipmakeover.com. This will give us some ideas. Great to be with you today. Have a great day and remember every single day you are making a difference.

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